1. Apply appropriate security measures to prevent immediate exploitation (put PC behind firewall/NAT - even XP's built-in firewall will suffice in a pinch)
2. Connect the PC to the network
3. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Windows Update
4. Download all updates marked as critical, and all others you feel you need, starting with the ones that need to be installed separately (WU tells you which)
5. Reboot
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until WU has no more patches for you
7. Configure automatic updates if not already done (WU will ask you to do this - it's a two-click procedure)
Ta-dah, your PC is secure. Now, I admit that the above can take hours (especially on slow Internet connections) but it's not hard to do. Each step is trivial to perform for any but the most novice of computer users.
Couldn't access the site through the computer at work, it was blocked by the Internet filter, something about "Criminal skills". Only application that seemed to have anything to do with the Internet in the taskbar was a Symantec anti-virus/internet shield app. Now why is it a "criminal skill" to know about magcard readers?
I am unsure as to why I posted the above as a reply to another comment, instead of as a new thread. I blame temporary(?) brain dysfunction, and apologize.
Already on the virge of being inaccessible, no doubt due to a heavy Slashdotting, so here is the text.
Are You Annoying?
Irritating behaviors not only annoy your co-workers, but they can also compromise your effectiveness and even derail your career.
JULY 23, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Do you tell IT insider jokes that users don't understand? Do you sprinkle technical jargon through discussions with business people? Do you find that you've usually got the right answer to any problem and you let everyone know it? If so, you may be something you didn't think you were: annoying.
Everyone's annoying some of the time, says Kimberly Alyn, a corporate trainer and co-author of Annoying People and Why You're One of Them (Llumina Press, 2003). But annoying behavior can have serious consequences in IT, where it can compromise your effectiveness, wreak havoc with projects and even derail your career.
Annoying behaviors are tricky because what annoys one person may sail by another. "You can say the same thing the same way to two people, and one person will say, 'Damn, that's annoying,' and the other person will not think anything of it," says Dan Bent, CIO at Benefit Systems Inc. in Indianapolis, an administrative services provider to health care plans.
But annoying behavior in IT sends ripples through the whole business. Gary Langer, associate vice president for academic technology at Chicago's Roosevelt University, explains that when IT support people are annoying, "people lose confidence, and they just give up. They stop asking questions."
Bent concurs. "You're always communicating with other people, and if you're annoying them, it reduces the likelihood your message will get across," he says.
Projects may also suffer. Jackie Palmer, a senior product manager at CRM software maker E.piphany Inc. in San Mateo, Calif., tells of participating at a meeting for a large insurance company that involved implementing process change. "The only way to do it is get [users] to buy in themselves," says Palmer. But a consultant at the meeting began to dictate what would happen. "The users became very combative," she recalls. It took several weeks of meetings to resolve the issues, and the project fell behind schedule.
If you think that you can't be annoying because you often work alone, think again. You still deal with people for support, advice and information, as well as to get a promotion, notes Gini Graham Scott, author of A Survival Guide for Working With Humans (Amacom, 2004).
For the worst offenders, the consequences of being annoying are potentially dire.
"Say someone comes to you and asks you a question today, and they find you annoying," says Bent. "Maybe the next time, they'll ask someone else. Soon people stop coming to you and asking you things, and you end up without a job."
The IT Niche
IT has its own annoying quirks. Langer says some IT people label users as neophytes and then blame them for any difficulties. "The user insists their e-mail doesn't work, and the IT person says, 'My e-mail works perfectly,' and assumes the user is the problem. Users really find this annoying," he says.
Some IT people are so sure they know what the problem is that they don't even listen to the user, says Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director at IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology in Menlo Park, Calif.
IT people expect users to always know what they want, and they can get exasperated when they don't. "Business people have a right to change their minds, because the business changes," says Ellen Gottesdiener, principal consultant at EBG Consulting in Carmel, Ind.
And IT folks often require the "right" decision, says Gerry McCartney, CIO at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia. "[They] have difficulty between sha
The Athlon 64 FX-51, at 2.2GHz, is about as fast (slightly faster generally speaking) as a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.2GHz. Which in turn is slightly faster than a "regular" 3.2GHz P4.
Good question. Read the blog anyway!
I have been meaning to change that sig, unfortunately Slashdot does not provide enough space for me to include a mini-faq.
In case you were looking for my personal opinion (doubtful!) here it is: Windows XP has major user interface, hardware support, stability, security and compatibility enhancements compared to Windows 2000. That's what I noticed when upgrading. Windows XP is also faster than 2000 on sufficiently powerful hardware (due to better compatibility). On "Windows 2000-era" hardware, Windows XP is slower than 2000.
I mean that's what seems to be happening with these rapid production cycles; they concentrate so much on improving one aspect that the entire product suffers, or at least starts to suffer, from it.
And let's not forget our favorite one, Microsoft; Although I'm sure this is not the main reason M$ sucks... *Insert M$ bashing here* *and here*
While I agree with the general idea that too rapid production cycles can be bad, Microsoft is hardly a major villain in this case. For each new Windows version, there have been improvements across the board, not just on single areas. Some would argue that this is not true for the Windows 95-98-Me line, which aren't quite as different from one another as the NT-2k-XP line (and 2k-2k3). However, 2-3 years is hardly a "rapid cycle" when talking computer software.
Let's also not forget that Windows Longhorn is still another year away at least, will have MAJOR new features across the board according to the information from Redmond thus far, and it's been some time since XP was released (2k3 doesn't count as a "new" Windows in this context as it's just XP for servers). So regarding OS's, Microsoft are hardly guilty of pushing a "rapid product cycle" in order to squeeze consumers for money (they compensate by charging lots for their software instead - different story which I will not bother with here).
Microsoft Office is, however, a different story. OpenOffice.org has only a subset of Microsoft Office 2003's features, but I don't find myself missing anything. I guess this means nothing of massive substance has been added to Office since '95 or so - but others would digress. There have been huge debates over this before but I think the general consensus is that the new features, however insignificant, must be of value to somebody, so there's no harm in Microsoft releasing new versions of Office every year - after all, there's not much more that can be added to Word or Excel in terms of "major features" (think "major" like the introduction of USB support in Windows 98 here. Now THAT's major!) but some will likely get the new versions anyway for the extra bells 'n whistles. Anyone who doesn't need the new features can just stick to their old versions or get OOo if they hit EOL. Problem solved.
Which car you think looks better is purely a matter of taste. You can't convince me that one car's "style" is objectively superior to another's - if someone thinks that a Renault Clio looks better than a Mercedes SLR (or $some_other_nice_looking_car), that's their unarguable right. Which is the better car is a completely different matter (my mother would probably say the Clio is, because it needs less fuel, and her primary concern is economy).
As far as I'm concerned, the M3 looks as much like a "pure bred sports car" as the S60R, if not less. It looks nothing like a real sports car (put it next to a Porsche 911 or Ferrari 360 Spyder). Above all, the kind of people who usually own M3's are the ones who drive like utter fucktards. Not the kind of people I'd like to be associated with by getting a BMW myself. At least Volvos are mostly transparent to the police.:)
True, you get more than a logo. You get a car underneath it, as well. What the poster was pointing out is that you can usually get a superior car without the BMW logo for several thousand dollars less.
Take the BMW M3 for instance, practically an icon among BMW fanboys. The Volvo S60R beats it by miles in pretty much every department (ok, it might me.1 seconds slower going to 100kph) at more than $10k less. And the service costs much less... Having a BMW automatically means replacing something simple like a windshield wiper will set you back $50 ($100?). Volvo still has humane prices on most of their spare parts.
(If Volvo is not your thing, much the same as above can be said for a few other brands. I just picked Volvo as an example because they're my favorite brand atm.)
That's news to me. I'm not a Viewsonic owner, but I was under the impression that Viewsonic bought out Nokia's computer display segment. Nokia's monitors were always awesome (I own a 446XS, best CRT I ever used) so I would expect Viewsonic's monitors to be among the best, as well.
Do you have any actual evidence, even subjective (links?) to back up your statement that Viewsonic monitors are bad?
Well, you can easily check if the sites you frequent have been infected. Just visit them thorough an Internet filter (didn't the article say that a modern AV could detect the malicious code?) or use a more secure browser and look in the source code(s) yourself.
In fact, someone should put up a list of sites known to be infected. I would gladly mirror it outside of the US if necessary. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to assemble such a list myself.
So much the better for us AMD users. Less money spent marketing - more money left to important stuff like making great CPU's and developing new and even better ones.
A great product doesn't need much marketing once it's past an initial treshold where prospective buyers come to realize it exists and what its merits are. Most of AMD's popularity comes from word of mouth.
Such driving would actually be quite in line with what I've come to expect from BMW drivers. M3 drivers are by far the worst. I thought it had something to do with the "the more expensive your car, the worse your driving" syndrome, but the Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Lexus (etc) owners all behave for the most part. Only Saab drivers come close to the craptasticality of BMW drivers' driving.
Multiplier locks on new chipsets - in effect, new CPU's? AMD's Athlon FX is completely unlocked. How is Intel going to compete by continuing to offer an inferior product?
Geez. I didn't realize I was replying to autopr0n. I visit your site all the time, it's awesome. For educational purposes, of course.
Anyway, back to the subject: They could probably write a hard drive "emulator" that was just a convenient front-end to Xbox Live, so it would work with older games. They could also bundle the Live subscription (say, a year's worth) with the Xbox2. Would be a huge selling point, right? Anyway, another option is that they could provide a slot for a flash drive, the ability to plug in a USB/IEEE1394 drive, or some other kind of external storage support, then use that as the "HD". Would work just as well and people who don't need/want persistent storage with their Xbox could save money by simply not buying any.
It doesn't, but even I can tell you how it could be solved; Just never unplug the unit and have the hardware keep refreshing the RAM so long as there's power (like a PC on standby). Make it absolutely clear to the user that if he unplugs the power, all his Xbox Live downloads will be lost.
The same way you would on an ordinary PC. Just allocate a slab of RAM and mount it as a physical drive. It's called a "ramdrive" and I'm sure Google can tell you more.
Of course, capacity would be limited, but performance would be extremely good comparing to a traditional HD.
Let it first be stated that I did not intend to reply to your post in its entirety, as you seem to have assumed. I merely felt the need to correct one statement which I found to be blatantly false. Now, to correct another:
AMD may say what they want, but CPU speed IS the main factor in performance. Because, in the AMD formula above, the "work per clock cycle" is the same for each manufacturer.
That's what Intel marketing would have you believe. But why then does an Athlon FX-53 at 2.4GHz perform better than an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.6GHz, as benchmarked by Anandtech here? According to you, the 1.2GHz difference in clock speed between those CPU's should mean decisive victory for Intel. It obviously does not. Hence, the "work per clock cycle" factor is not equal for different manufacturers. QED.
Regarding your rant about text processors not needing the CPU 99% of the time - that's probably true, but what about what goes on in background processing? I might be compiling Gentoo (or something else), running Seti@Home, virus scanning my hard drive or any number of other background tasks. It adds up. Now, I very rarely tax my CPU in this manner. I doubt there are many people who do. But when it happens, it's nice to have performance to spare, which is why I bought a powerful PC to begin with. As for the people who only use their computer for one thing at a time, they don't need 2+ GHz CPU's in the first place, so they should just go for whichever CPU is cheaper. And as you may know, AMD wins that fight, too.
1) The fastest possible CPU, in *true* GHz, not in AMD's inflated "+" bogoghz.
No problem. AMD already publishes the true clock speeds of all their CPU's. The "3400+" or whatever you've seen is a model name, not a measurement of clock speed but rather of performance. AMD explains it here. Your post suggest that you are unaware of the fact that other things than clock speed have a significant impact on the performance of a CPU.
Next you'll be complaining that car makers name their cars cryptic things like "320Ci", "XC90" or "GT40" instead of naming each car according to its BHP rating.
Slashdot Mirror
How is rebooting a PC not trivial?
Downloading all the patches isn't trivial?
1. Apply appropriate security measures to prevent immediate exploitation (put PC behind firewall/NAT - even XP's built-in firewall will suffice in a pinch)
2. Connect the PC to the network
3. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools->Windows Update
4. Download all updates marked as critical, and all others you feel you need, starting with the ones that need to be installed separately (WU tells you which)
5. Reboot
6. Repeat steps 3-5 until WU has no more patches for you
7. Configure automatic updates if not already done (WU will ask you to do this - it's a two-click procedure)
Ta-dah, your PC is secure. Now, I admit that the above can take hours (especially on slow Internet connections) but it's not hard to do. Each step is trivial to perform for any but the most novice of computer users.
Couldn't access the site through the computer at work, it was blocked by the Internet filter, something about "Criminal skills". Only application that seemed to have anything to do with the Internet in the taskbar was a Symantec anti-virus/internet shield app. Now why is it a "criminal skill" to know about magcard readers?
I am unsure as to why I posted the above as a reply to another comment, instead of as a new thread. I blame temporary(?) brain dysfunction, and apologize.
The Athlon 64 FX-51, at 2.2GHz, is about as fast (slightly faster generally speaking) as a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at 3.2GHz. Which in turn is slightly faster than a "regular" 3.2GHz P4.
Heh. You just described the typical BMW owner's driving style.
Good question. Read the blog anyway!
I have been meaning to change that sig, unfortunately Slashdot does not provide enough space for me to include a mini-faq.
Now watch this comment go down as -1, Offtopic.
Here's the oldest joke I remember:
What do you say to a blonde in a wheelchair, who has no arms or legs?
-- Hey, nice tits!
Ow, that was exhausting. Now can I please have an invite?
You are correct - I meant to write "disagree". Thanks.
Please STFW. There are a ton of articles written on this subject already. Here, I'll help you find some.
In case you were looking for my personal opinion (doubtful!) here it is: Windows XP has major user interface, hardware support, stability, security and compatibility enhancements compared to Windows 2000. That's what I noticed when upgrading. Windows XP is also faster than 2000 on sufficiently powerful hardware (due to better compatibility). On "Windows 2000-era" hardware, Windows XP is slower than 2000.
I mean that's what seems to be happening with these rapid production cycles; they concentrate so much on improving one aspect that the entire product suffers, or at least starts to suffer, from it.
And let's not forget our favorite one, Microsoft; Although I'm sure this is not the main reason M$ sucks... *Insert M$ bashing here* *and here*
While I agree with the general idea that too rapid production cycles can be bad, Microsoft is hardly a major villain in this case. For each new Windows version, there have been improvements across the board, not just on single areas. Some would argue that this is not true for the Windows 95-98-Me line, which aren't quite as different from one another as the NT-2k-XP line (and 2k-2k3). However, 2-3 years is hardly a "rapid cycle" when talking computer software.
Let's also not forget that Windows Longhorn is still another year away at least, will have MAJOR new features across the board according to the information from Redmond thus far, and it's been some time since XP was released (2k3 doesn't count as a "new" Windows in this context as it's just XP for servers). So regarding OS's, Microsoft are hardly guilty of pushing a "rapid product cycle" in order to squeeze consumers for money (they compensate by charging lots for their software instead - different story which I will not bother with here).
Microsoft Office is, however, a different story. OpenOffice.org has only a subset of Microsoft Office 2003's features, but I don't find myself missing anything. I guess this means nothing of massive substance has been added to Office since '95 or so - but others would digress. There have been huge debates over this before but I think the general consensus is that the new features, however insignificant, must be of value to somebody, so there's no harm in Microsoft releasing new versions of Office every year - after all, there's not much more that can be added to Word or Excel in terms of "major features" (think "major" like the introduction of USB support in Windows 98 here. Now THAT's major!) but some will likely get the new versions anyway for the extra bells 'n whistles. Anyone who doesn't need the new features can just stick to their old versions or get OOo if they hit EOL. Problem solved.
Which car you think looks better is purely a matter of taste. You can't convince me that one car's "style" is objectively superior to another's - if someone thinks that a Renault Clio looks better than a Mercedes SLR (or $some_other_nice_looking_car), that's their unarguable right. Which is the better car is a completely different matter (my mother would probably say the Clio is, because it needs less fuel, and her primary concern is economy).
:)
As far as I'm concerned, the M3 looks as much like a "pure bred sports car" as the S60R, if not less. It looks nothing like a real sports car (put it next to a Porsche 911 or Ferrari 360 Spyder). Above all, the kind of people who usually own M3's are the ones who drive like utter fucktards. Not the kind of people I'd like to be associated with by getting a BMW myself. At least Volvos are mostly transparent to the police.
True, you get more than a logo. You get a car underneath it, as well. What the poster was pointing out is that you can usually get a superior car without the BMW logo for several thousand dollars less.
.1 seconds slower going to 100kph) at more than $10k less. And the service costs much less... Having a BMW automatically means replacing something simple like a windshield wiper will set you back $50 ($100?). Volvo still has humane prices on most of their spare parts.
Take the BMW M3 for instance, practically an icon among BMW fanboys. The Volvo S60R beats it by miles in pretty much every department (ok, it might me
(If Volvo is not your thing, much the same as above can be said for a few other brands. I just picked Volvo as an example because they're my favorite brand atm.)
That's news to me. I'm not a Viewsonic owner, but I was under the impression that Viewsonic bought out Nokia's computer display segment. Nokia's monitors were always awesome (I own a 446XS, best CRT I ever used) so I would expect Viewsonic's monitors to be among the best, as well.
Do you have any actual evidence, even subjective (links?) to back up your statement that Viewsonic monitors are bad?
Gee, I'm glad I use Firefox on Windows XP, with all the latest security updates, behind NAT and a firewall.
Well, you can easily check if the sites you frequent have been infected. Just visit them thorough an Internet filter (didn't the article say that a modern AV could detect the malicious code?) or use a more secure browser and look in the source code(s) yourself.
In fact, someone should put up a list of sites known to be infected. I would gladly mirror it outside of the US if necessary. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to assemble such a list myself.
So much the better for us AMD users. Less money spent marketing - more money left to important stuff like making great CPU's and developing new and even better ones.
A great product doesn't need much marketing once it's past an initial treshold where prospective buyers come to realize it exists and what its merits are. Most of AMD's popularity comes from word of mouth.
Such driving would actually be quite in line with what I've come to expect from BMW drivers. M3 drivers are by far the worst. I thought it had something to do with the "the more expensive your car, the worse your driving" syndrome, but the Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Lexus (etc) owners all behave for the most part. Only Saab drivers come close to the craptasticality of BMW drivers' driving.
Multiplier locks on new chipsets - in effect, new CPU's? AMD's Athlon FX is completely unlocked. How is Intel going to compete by continuing to offer an inferior product?
Geez. I didn't realize I was replying to autopr0n. I visit your site all the time, it's awesome. For educational purposes, of course.
Anyway, back to the subject: They could probably write a hard drive "emulator" that was just a convenient front-end to Xbox Live, so it would work with older games. They could also bundle the Live subscription (say, a year's worth) with the Xbox2. Would be a huge selling point, right? Anyway, another option is that they could provide a slot for a flash drive, the ability to plug in a USB/IEEE1394 drive, or some other kind of external storage support, then use that as the "HD". Would work just as well and people who don't need/want persistent storage with their Xbox could save money by simply not buying any.
It doesn't, but even I can tell you how it could be solved; Just never unplug the unit and have the hardware keep refreshing the RAM so long as there's power (like a PC on standby). Make it absolutely clear to the user that if he unplugs the power, all his Xbox Live downloads will be lost.
The same way you would on an ordinary PC. Just allocate a slab of RAM and mount it as a physical drive. It's called a "ramdrive" and I'm sure Google can tell you more.
Of course, capacity would be limited, but performance would be extremely good comparing to a traditional HD.
Let it first be stated that I did not intend to reply to your post in its entirety, as you seem to have assumed. I merely felt the need to correct one statement which I found to be blatantly false. Now, to correct another:
AMD may say what they want, but CPU speed IS the main factor in performance. Because, in the AMD formula above, the "work per clock cycle" is the same for each manufacturer.
That's what Intel marketing would have you believe. But why then does an Athlon FX-53 at 2.4GHz perform better than an Intel Pentium 4 at 3.6GHz, as benchmarked by Anandtech here? According to you, the 1.2GHz difference in clock speed between those CPU's should mean decisive victory for Intel. It obviously does not. Hence, the "work per clock cycle" factor is not equal for different manufacturers. QED.
Regarding your rant about text processors not needing the CPU 99% of the time - that's probably true, but what about what goes on in background processing? I might be compiling Gentoo (or something else), running Seti@Home, virus scanning my hard drive or any number of other background tasks. It adds up. Now, I very rarely tax my CPU in this manner. I doubt there are many people who do. But when it happens, it's nice to have performance to spare, which is why I bought a powerful PC to begin with. As for the people who only use their computer for one thing at a time, they don't need 2+ GHz CPU's in the first place, so they should just go for whichever CPU is cheaper. And as you may know, AMD wins that fight, too.
1) The fastest possible CPU, in *true* GHz, not in AMD's inflated "+" bogoghz.
No problem. AMD already publishes the true clock speeds of all their CPU's. The "3400+" or whatever you've seen is a model name, not a measurement of clock speed but rather of performance. AMD explains it here. Your post suggest that you are unaware of the fact that other things than clock speed have a significant impact on the performance of a CPU.
Next you'll be complaining that car makers name their cars cryptic things like "320Ci", "XC90" or "GT40" instead of naming each car according to its BHP rating.