I can second this recommendation, as long as users are on Windows, which I'm guessing they most likely are.
Once it's setup, it really is as simple as VNC can possibly be for users (literally, just: go to this website, download this file, click yes/allow to any security warnings).
That said, it's pretty amazing how difficult it is to talk some users through something as simple as this, but I guess it's not easy explaining anything technical to people who think their computer is a glorified dishwasher.
showmypc.com also works pretty well and there's zero configuration on either end. You both download the same file that contains the viewer and listener, the listener generates a 12-digit number that the user read out to you over the phone which you enter into the viewer, done.
For Christ sake, I can't believe the replies I'm getting from people who try to justify this idiotic behavior. The amount of ignorance and stupidity out there is just mind boggling.
Indeed.
You should try living in a country with oppressive, malevolent and profiteering traffic laws that will ruin your life for one accidental chirp of your tires. Trust me, you have it better.
I'm not sure if you were going for the funny mod or just being obtuse, because that is in no way a comparison.
Russian roulette is purely chance. By definition, you don't know which chamber contains the bullet and you have no way of gaming it or improving your odds.
This guy did not achieve this feat by chance; he took immense precautions. If you actually read TFA (yeah, right), you'll see that he spent a year and half, a ton of money and a huge effort in preparation. Yes, chance obviously still plays a part, but he made every possible effort to mitigate it.
Once again, Slashdot demonstrates that they are largely the same as every other group of wingnuts with their pet interest (Slashdot's being Internet/tech and often intersecting topics). You'll defend it to the hills, hypothesize about chilling effects on liberty, have Internet arguments until your fingers bleed and claim that it's important to everybody (or that it should be) Yet, when taken outside of your box, suddenly you become the same as every other idiot group demanding to sell your liberty to buy some safety.
"But it's illegal!"
Yeah, so? I thought most of us were above such petulant arguments. The CFAA practically makes surfing the web illegal and you already commit three felonies a day.
Look: just because you're a clumsy, uncoordinated, risk-averting, thrill-fearing nerd doesn't mean everyone else is. I like you guys, but when it comes to any story involving cars or driving, you show your true colors and disappoint me.
Because you most definitely did not read the article (on Slashdot? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), I'll give you the cliff's notes. This wasn't just some unskilled lunatic pushing down the "go faster" pedal in a pickup truck, this guy is a dedicated enthusiast who spent a year and a half preparing, installing additional equipment to ensure his high-performance vehicle would be up the task, finding co and lead drivers to avoid traffic and construction zones and spending almost ten grand on maintenance. I doubt many of us have spent much more than that on an entire car.
Since Slashdot is a mainly US site, you could be forgiven for thinking that all cars are shitbuckets that spontaneously explode the second they breach 70mph. Car manufacturers from places that aren't 'Muricuh actually rework an entire vehicle -- chassis, suspension, brakes, anything that's necessary to handle additional power, and more -- when they soup up an engine because they're not for redneck motor "sports."
The car he was driving is a very German, very expensive and very performance-oriented Mercedes Benz. This is a vehicle designed to be very stable and manageable at much higher speeds than anything you've likely driven. Since I have, let me tell you what it's like: highway speed feels like walking pace. Cars like this barely need to make an effort to reach and maintain it. Even at double the speed, it's still hardly trying -- it hardly needs to. By comparison, a Ford Mustang, for example, feels pretty damn scary at half of highway speed because it's chassis, suspension and brakes are shit. Same factor, different hardware. Think of how a low-grade ARM processor would perform benchmarking AES calculation versus an i7 with an AES instruction set. Same factor, different hardware.
To everyone calling for extreme traffic laws and enforcement, try coming to Canada and see how you like it. BC is downright condescending and oppressive, Manitoba is not far behind, Ontario... I don't even want to know. In many places here, they take away your license, pile on debt for decades and destroy your life for the horrific act of... uh, your tires chirped. I shit you not, this happens.
Oh, and I haven't even told you how many provinces have government-run insurance monopolies ("crown corporations") who are in bed with the cops. Just the other day, there was story in the paper praising how my province's auto insurance provider paid for the local police department's overtime to nail drivers doing barely over the limit. This is not an expenditure for the company, this is an investment: pay some overtime wages now, get the kickbacks in ticket amounts, obscene licensing costs and insurance rates for years to come. Yet, no one will write in to point out this blatant corruption because OMG!! Safety!!
Still not convinced? Look up "MPI VIU." This is the (government-run) insurance company colluding with the cops to
My desktop keyboard has 6 rows... including the function keys... what on earth are you putting on the 7th?
Count it, honkey! (consider the ESC and other keys aligned with it to be a "row") The important part here is the 3x2 text nav cluster in the top right and the F key grouping.
If its going to have a number pad and text nav area then yes, they need to be correct. But I don't necessarily want them, they force the keyboard part to the left, and make working on it less comfortable. I want the f to the left of the center of the screen, and the j to the right.
Whatever was wrong with the ultrabay keypad? Who ever uses optical drives anymore anyway?
And one thing you didn't mention... I want, nay, DEMAND, that the slash/pipe be above a wider enter key, rather than besdie a double-high-narrow enter key. I will not buy a laptop with the latter arrangement. I just end up typing / evertime i want an enter.
Forgot this one. Yes, this is absolutely critical. Those bullshit multilingual keyboards drive me to the point of homicidal fury.
Though I have to say, the worst keyboard I've ever had the displeasure of using (I work on a lot of customer machines) was an HP that put an extra column of keys along the left side as some hot keys (that no one will ever use), causing the rest of the keyboard to shifted over to the right. HP deserves an award for the most user-hostile, maldesigned piece of technology ever devised.
- Stick mouse (clit mouse, whatever you want to call it) with actual buttons, not these bullshit buttons built into a trackpad
Hell no on both. I want the multitouch apple trackpad thanks. No buttons at all, no sticks, just a BIG FLAT trackpad space flush with the case. Build a logitech touchpad into the laptop... that's what I want.
You like vague hardware interfaces that force you to constantly take your eyes off the screen?
I'm fine with 16:10 is that what your 5:4 is supposed to be? I don't really want 4:3.The key is vertical resolution not aspect ration... classic 4:3 is 1024x768. So 1366x768 is an improvement but 1200x720 is NOT an upgrade. I'd like 1080p resolution or better.
4:3 gets us awesome resolutions like 1400x1050 or 1600x1200.
How about making some quality workstation laptops for business users?
We want:
- Rock-solid build quality and screen hinges
- Sturdy keyboards with standard 7-row layout (text nav 3x2 cluster, F key groupings, non-chiclet)
- Stick mouse (clit mouse, whatever you want to call it) with actual buttons, not these bullshit buttons built into a trackpad
- Understated, boxy designs (no flashy bullshit)
- 4:3 screens (or, at least, 5:4)
Lenovo has completely fucked up the ThinkPad line by removing literally every great feature that made a ThinkPad great. Go and eat their lunch.
What about off-roading? What about new roads that aren't yet in the GPS maps? Imperfect road surfaces that confuse imperfect recognition systems? Lines mispainted on the road? Faded or covered lines? Awkward intersections? Snowed over signage? Intersections directed by police officers while traffic lights are out?
Can automatic driving systems handle all these and more? And if not, what's the point if we still need to keep our eyes and attention on the road at all times in case one of these situations come up? If anything, they would make us *less* safe by giving us a false sense of security and putting us out of practice whenever we need to take over.
Besides, we already *have* a "universal interface" for managing transportation and it's generally pretty good at handling inconsistencies and determining these sorts arbitrary decisions very quickly.
It's called the human brain.
The problem is that, at least here, the programming is shit. Seriously, just getting a glance at the training requirements that are expected of drivers in other parts of the world, mainly Europe, would cause an American to die of shock.
As I recall, each paying Lavabit customers' email storage was encrypted using a key of the respective customers' choosing. Lavabit did not have these keys and could not, themselves, read customers' email, even if they wanted to.
So, I'm to believe that you can be charged with contempt for not providing something that you don't have?
Seriously, this should not have to be explained on Slashdot.
Data can be wrong. Interpretations can be wrong. Police tend to intepret everything as an act of wrongdoing as soon as they have a single data point or dumb-ass idea that suggests you are a suspect.
Case in a point: David Marie (jump to 5:00). He enters a subway station. He's flagged as a suspect because he's "wearing a jacket." Seriously. The Bumblefuck Police Department then use this as justification to raid his apartment where find a page of random scribbles they deem as "subway map" (seriously, look at the drawing in the video, it's just fucking random scribbles) and proceed to charge him as a terrorist. Oh, he's not in prison, he just can't get a Visa, leave the country or expect to ever be free from constant restrictions and "unwanted attention" in his life.
Amazing how someone can be too dangerous not to be watched, but not dangerous enough to imprison. I wonder how it feels to be stupid enough to engage in that level of cognitive dissonance and not go insane.
We should also pay exorbitant rates to AT&T rent restricted handsets that only they are allowed to provide us. Y'know, because we did it for so long and are used to it.
Will never happen. The gravy train has too much momentum to stop. Too many US politicians are so corrupt and hard-headed that America will never get something passed like Canada's Federal Accountability Act, which bans any amount of lobbying that could affect the political process.
I said goodbye forever to the hell of inkjets almost a year ago and got a Brother B&W laser with auto-duplexing. It's a simple, no-nonsense device that just works and they provide drivers for everything. I have it installed on a Debian desktop that I use as a print server, among other things. Brother makes B&W and color multi-functions as well, and I'm sure they're equally excellent devices.
The skimpy, factory-included toner is only just now telling me it's low, but, hey, it will still try to print until it's absolutely dead, unlike many inkjets that lie to you about low ink and refuse to print until you buy more at a higher unit cost than bull semen.
Requiring the use the buttons to move limbs and digits is deliberately obtuse and a test of your abstractive coordination and processing ability more than anything else.
QWOP is just a silly web game purposefully eliciting utter hilarity, but calling this thing a "Surgeon Simulator" is intellectually insulting. It's just an advanced QWOP.
Slashdot Mirror
I can second this recommendation, as long as users are on Windows, which I'm guessing they most likely are.
Once it's setup, it really is as simple as VNC can possibly be for users (literally, just: go to this website, download this file, click yes/allow to any security warnings).
That said, it's pretty amazing how difficult it is to talk some users through something as simple as this, but I guess it's not easy explaining anything technical to people who think their computer is a glorified dishwasher.
showmypc.com also works pretty well and there's zero configuration on either end. You both download the same file that contains the viewer and listener, the listener generates a 12-digit number that the user read out to you over the phone which you enter into the viewer, done.
For Christ sake, I can't believe the replies I'm getting from people who try to justify this idiotic behavior. The amount of ignorance and stupidity out there is just mind boggling.
Indeed.
You should try living in a country with oppressive, malevolent and profiteering traffic laws that will ruin your life for one accidental chirp of your tires. Trust me, you have it better.
I'm not sure if you were going for the funny mod or just being obtuse, because that is in no way a comparison.
Russian roulette is purely chance. By definition, you don't know which chamber contains the bullet and you have no way of gaming it or improving your odds.
This guy did not achieve this feat by chance; he took immense precautions. If you actually read TFA (yeah, right), you'll see that he spent a year and half, a ton of money and a huge effort in preparation. Yes, chance obviously still plays a part, but he made every possible effort to mitigate it.
Once again, Slashdot demonstrates that they are largely the same as every other group of wingnuts with their pet interest (Slashdot's being Internet/tech and often intersecting topics). You'll defend it to the hills, hypothesize about chilling effects on liberty, have Internet arguments until your fingers bleed and claim that it's important to everybody (or that it should be) Yet, when taken outside of your box, suddenly you become the same as every other idiot group demanding to sell your liberty to buy some safety.
"But it's illegal!"
Yeah, so? I thought most of us were above such petulant arguments. The CFAA practically makes surfing the web illegal and you already commit three felonies a day.
Look: just because you're a clumsy, uncoordinated, risk-averting, thrill-fearing nerd doesn't mean everyone else is. I like you guys, but when it comes to any story involving cars or driving, you show your true colors and disappoint me.
Because you most definitely did not read the article (on Slashdot? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), I'll give you the cliff's notes. This wasn't just some unskilled lunatic pushing down the "go faster" pedal in a pickup truck, this guy is a dedicated enthusiast who spent a year and a half preparing, installing additional equipment to ensure his high-performance vehicle would be up the task, finding co and lead drivers to avoid traffic and construction zones and spending almost ten grand on maintenance. I doubt many of us have spent much more than that on an entire car.
Since Slashdot is a mainly US site, you could be forgiven for thinking that all cars are shitbuckets that spontaneously explode the second they breach 70mph. Car manufacturers from places that aren't 'Muricuh actually rework an entire vehicle -- chassis, suspension, brakes, anything that's necessary to handle additional power, and more -- when they soup up an engine because they're not for redneck motor "sports."
The car he was driving is a very German, very expensive and very performance-oriented Mercedes Benz. This is a vehicle designed to be very stable and manageable at much higher speeds than anything you've likely driven. Since I have, let me tell you what it's like: highway speed feels like walking pace. Cars like this barely need to make an effort to reach and maintain it. Even at double the speed, it's still hardly trying -- it hardly needs to. By comparison, a Ford Mustang, for example, feels pretty damn scary at half of highway speed because it's chassis, suspension and brakes are shit. Same factor, different hardware. Think of how a low-grade ARM processor would perform benchmarking AES calculation versus an i7 with an AES instruction set. Same factor, different hardware.
To everyone calling for extreme traffic laws and enforcement, try coming to Canada and see how you like it. BC is downright condescending and oppressive, Manitoba is not far behind, Ontario... I don't even want to know. In many places here, they take away your license, pile on debt for decades and destroy your life for the horrific act of ... uh, your tires chirped. I shit you not, this happens.
Oh, and I haven't even told you how many provinces have government-run insurance monopolies ("crown corporations") who are in bed with the cops. Just the other day, there was story in the paper praising how my province's auto insurance provider paid for the local police department's overtime to nail drivers doing barely over the limit. This is not an expenditure for the company, this is an investment: pay some overtime wages now, get the kickbacks in ticket amounts, obscene licensing costs and insurance rates for years to come. Yet, no one will write in to point out this blatant corruption because OMG!! Safety!!
Still not convinced? Look up "MPI VIU." This is the (government-run) insurance company colluding with the cops to
Muting your microphone?
This is one of the stupidest things I've read all day.
Awfully generous of you to use "day."
Turning off the lights and letting my big black dog bark all she wants at all the little mooches.
My desktop keyboard has 6 rows... including the function keys... what on earth are you putting on the 7th?
Count it, honkey! (consider the ESC and other keys aligned with it to be a "row") The important part here is the 3x2 text nav cluster in the top right and the F key grouping.
If its going to have a number pad and text nav area then yes, they need to be correct. But I don't necessarily want them, they force the keyboard part to the left, and make working on it less comfortable. I want the f to the left of the center of the screen, and the j to the right.
Whatever was wrong with the ultrabay keypad? Who ever uses optical drives anymore anyway?
And one thing you didn't mention... I want, nay, DEMAND, that the slash/pipe be above a wider enter key, rather than besdie a double-high-narrow enter key. I will not buy a laptop with the latter arrangement. I just end up typing / evertime i want an enter.
Forgot this one. Yes, this is absolutely critical. Those bullshit multilingual keyboards drive me to the point of homicidal fury.
Though I have to say, the worst keyboard I've ever had the displeasure of using (I work on a lot of customer machines) was an HP that put an extra column of keys along the left side as some hot keys (that no one will ever use), causing the rest of the keyboard to shifted over to the right. HP deserves an award for the most user-hostile, maldesigned piece of technology ever devised.
- Stick mouse (clit mouse, whatever you want to call it) with actual buttons, not these bullshit buttons built into a trackpad Hell no on both. I want the multitouch apple trackpad thanks. No buttons at all, no sticks, just a BIG FLAT trackpad space flush with the case. Build a logitech touchpad into the laptop... that's what I want.
You like vague hardware interfaces that force you to constantly take your eyes off the screen?
I'm fine with 16:10 is that what your 5:4 is supposed to be? I don't really want 4:3.The key is vertical resolution not aspect ration... classic 4:3 is 1024x768. So 1366x768 is an improvement but 1200x720 is NOT an upgrade. I'd like 1080p resolution or better.
4:3 gets us awesome resolutions like 1400x1050 or 1600x1200.
In what universe? Go right ahead and look at Lenovo's website. Point me to any laptop without some chiclet shit keyboard.
If you think that America's foremost healthcare problems have anything at all to do with technology, you are hopelessly deluded.
Right... and once everything is designed for consumption, how will anyone actually create anything to be consumed?
How about making some quality workstation laptops for business users?
We want:
- Rock-solid build quality and screen hinges
- Sturdy keyboards with standard 7-row layout (text nav 3x2 cluster, F key groupings, non-chiclet)
- Stick mouse (clit mouse, whatever you want to call it) with actual buttons, not these bullshit buttons built into a trackpad
- Understated, boxy designs (no flashy bullshit)
- 4:3 screens (or, at least, 5:4)
Lenovo has completely fucked up the ThinkPad line by removing literally every great feature that made a ThinkPad great. Go and eat their lunch.
Because, of all the privacy violators made apparent in the past several months, Canonical is clearly the worst offender.
What about off-roading? What about new roads that aren't yet in the GPS maps? Imperfect road surfaces that confuse imperfect recognition systems? Lines mispainted on the road? Faded or covered lines? Awkward intersections? Snowed over signage? Intersections directed by police officers while traffic lights are out?
Can automatic driving systems handle all these and more? And if not, what's the point if we still need to keep our eyes and attention on the road at all times in case one of these situations come up? If anything, they would make us *less* safe by giving us a false sense of security and putting us out of practice whenever we need to take over.
Besides, we already *have* a "universal interface" for managing transportation and it's generally pretty good at handling inconsistencies and determining these sorts arbitrary decisions very quickly.
It's called the human brain.
The problem is that, at least here, the programming is shit. Seriously, just getting a glance at the training requirements that are expected of drivers in other parts of the world, mainly Europe, would cause an American to die of shock.
And how would Slashdot would look if would editors would edit?
As I recall, each paying Lavabit customers' email storage was encrypted using a key of the respective customers' choosing. Lavabit did not have these keys and could not, themselves, read customers' email, even if they wanted to.
So, I'm to believe that you can be charged with contempt for not providing something that you don't have?
Seriously, this should not have to be explained on Slashdot.
Data can be wrong. Interpretations can be wrong. Police tend to intepret everything as an act of wrongdoing as soon as they have a single data point or dumb-ass idea that suggests you are a suspect.
Case in a point: David Marie (jump to 5:00). He enters a subway station. He's flagged as a suspect because he's "wearing a jacket." Seriously. The Bumblefuck Police Department then use this as justification to raid his apartment where find a page of random scribbles they deem as "subway map" (seriously, look at the drawing in the video, it's just fucking random scribbles) and proceed to charge him as a terrorist. Oh, he's not in prison, he just can't get a Visa, leave the country or expect to ever be free from constant restrictions and "unwanted attention" in his life.
Amazing how someone can be too dangerous not to be watched, but not dangerous enough to imprison. I wonder how it feels to be stupid enough to engage in that level of cognitive dissonance and not go insane.
I don't see us declaring a War on Nuts.
Must be nice not knowing any feminists.
You could decide *not* to be a nation of barbarians that actually murders people under official auspices.
We should also pay exorbitant rates to AT&T rent restricted handsets that only they are allowed to provide us. Y'know, because we did it for so long and are used to it.
Powell is profiteeristic sack of toxic shit.
Will never happen. The gravy train has too much momentum to stop. Too many US politicians are so corrupt and hard-headed that America will never get something passed like Canada's Federal Accountability Act, which bans any amount of lobbying that could affect the political process.
Remind me, who are Google's "consumers" again?
I said goodbye forever to the hell of inkjets almost a year ago and got a Brother B&W laser with auto-duplexing. It's a simple, no-nonsense device that just works and they provide drivers for everything. I have it installed on a Debian desktop that I use as a print server, among other things. Brother makes B&W and color multi-functions as well, and I'm sure they're equally excellent devices.
The skimpy, factory-included toner is only just now telling me it's low, but, hey, it will still try to print until it's absolutely dead, unlike many inkjets that lie to you about low ink and refuse to print until you buy more at a higher unit cost than bull semen.
Friends don't let friends by inkjets.
Requiring the use the buttons to move limbs and digits is deliberately obtuse and a test of your abstractive coordination and processing ability more than anything else.
QWOP is just a silly web game purposefully eliciting utter hilarity, but calling this thing a "Surgeon Simulator" is intellectually insulting. It's just an advanced QWOP.
Is this referring to asshole carriers that charge extra to not disable the "feature" of network routing software in a device that you own?
That's like your ISP charging you extra to use a router. Rent-seeking horseshit.