I used to live for his regular columns. I loved his wit, and curmudgeonly attitude. I met him a few times and found him the same in person as he was in print. He will be missed.
Yeah, VW beetles were dangerous little cars. I drove one for years (a 1964 model) and I was very careful, and knew what a death trap they could be. But how many of us ride motorcycles, or other dangerous vehicles. Life is a series of risks. I guess we could wrap ourselves in cotton balls and stay home. He was not a "damned fool" just a human being who chose to do something he knew was risky, who no doubt weighed the risks, and decided to go ahead.
Robert A. Heinlein in his 1957 time-travel novel described exactly this idea in detail when his protagonist awoke in the "far distant" year of 2000. So it is hardly new.
I live in the outskirts of a major metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay Area. I cannot get what a slashdoter would consider broadband in any form. The local Telco insists they want to sell me 6 Mbit DSL and that they can serve me. But they simply cannot. The local DSLAM is over 18,000 feet from my door, and it is full with no available ports. Further, the lines that serve me have load coils on them which the Telco refuses to remove. Because of the load coils, even dial-up sucks. I have been fighting them, begging them for ten years to give me service. Further, they have a cell phone site less than 1000 feet from my door, could put a DSLAM there and serve me nicely but refuse. Yet hardly a week goes by that I do not get a letter or phone call trying to sell me a service that they do not have and cannot deliver. As for Cable? They are not within 2 miles of me. We need some oversight to force the Telco to actually provide the service they claim to be able to. By removing load coils and upgrading the DSLAM they could probably give me 384 KBPS. Not quite real broadband, but better than what I have now. But they refuse. By putting a DSLAM in the cell phone facility, they could easily give me 6 mbps, but refuse. They have dark fiber that is sitting unused in the cell site, but won't sell me service.
Yet they constantly bug me to buy their nonexistent service. I am not usually a proponent of government intervention, but I do not see any other way to force them to deliver service. They want the relatively easy low-hanging fruit, but refuse to upgrade the infrastructure to serve the more marginal cases.
No it can't. Many many people, including yours truly cannot buy health insurance for any price.
I am healthy, no pre-existing conditions, and have money in the bank. I am also gray-haired and unemployed. They won't take my money and I've tried and tried.
Actually, you're quite wrong. I want to avoid closed "off-the-shelf" products if at all possible. But I want a really good system, and am trying to learn what is available in the Linux world that will meet my needs. I am leaning heavily toward Zoneminder, but want to know about alternatives I may have missed.
I am planning a large server infrastructure that will include applications such as Asterisk, MythTV and even Misterhouse. I am very much wondering as well about sharing server platforms, thus looking for caveats about combining, say, Asterisk and a few security cameras on the same server.
Frankly, your post is offensive and does not contribute to the discussion.
Stony
I agree that Analog has really, seriously deteriorated. I have been a subscriber since the 1950's. I would eagerly await each issue, devour it in a single sitting, and then impatiently await the next one.
A few years ago I began to notice I was reading fewer and fewer stories. For every one I enjoyed, there would be one that was inane and incomprehensible. Then there would be more and more worthless ones, and fewer and fewer good ones.
When I began to see more and more issues that were entirely devoid of Science Fiction content, and filled with inane trash, I became more and more unhappy with them. I started just tossing each new issue on the shelf unopened, perhaps getting around to checking them out weeks later.
I finally realized I hadn't found an issue worth reading in over a year, and renewal time came up. I wrote them a nice letter and explained why I was dropping them. I promised to check the newsstand issues for content and that I would resubscribe when I started seeing something I wanted to read. That was three years ago.
They've been dead a long time. It is time to bury the corpse.
First point, Lots of us have electronics from 1958 that still works fine. As someone who collects old radios and stuff, I can attest that most electronics lasts a long time pretty well, especially if stored well.
Second point, everyone rapping on about how the capacitors won't last are mostly ignorant people repeating stuff they've heard. The capacitors that won't last are the cheapo junk capacitors made in China. Quality caps last just fine. I have a "Junk box" full of quality American and Japanese made caps dating from the 1960's and 1970's that I STILL use as repair parts when I need a capacitor. Never have had a bad one, and I'm talking boxes of hundreds of them.
Of course, most of the computers you are talking about are probably filled with crap Chinese capacitors. On the other hand, if they're already a decade old, maybe not. The China junk usually dies in a couple of years. I've repaired many a two year old computer whose capacitors have failed.
I have quality Collins radios from the 1940's that still have all original caps (and tubes) and still work fine. On the other hand, I have a very expensive 7.1 channel surround sound amp system, about 5 years old, and it's power supply caps went out recently. I pulled out a couple caps from my junk box, caps old enough to vote, wired em in, and the Amp lives on.
Media, yeah, that's another story. Most will be unreadable in 50 years. Quality optical might have a chance. Paper tape will last. Yeah, that's the ticket. Print the MSDOS install disks to paper tape! That'll work;) Windows will need a LOT of tape.
A C-Band dish with a digital receiver has access to more programming, a better signal and lower prices for programming than anything Dish or Direct offer. It even gets HDTV!
I have been using one for 8 years, and wouldn'y trade for the little dish product on a bet!
Use it as intended!! Much better!
Let's all hate stupidity and poor judgment instead.
Admittedly, SUVs are often driven by people who don't need them, and wrecked by people who confuse their SUV with a sports car and try to drive it inappropriately. Such stupid behavior deserves criticism. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that a lot of people NEED an SUV for their work.
I drive an SUV. I will continue to drive the SUV regardless of how high the price of fuel goes, for one simple reason. I need a vehicle that can haul five working men, a boat load of tools and tow a construction trailer full of materials. But the high fuel prices are severely hurting my ability to make a living.
Carried to the ultimate extreme, the high fuel prices are going to cause me to stop working, stop employing tradesmen, stop buying construction materials, and so on. I am of an age and financial ability to simply retire and stop fighting the battles. Who has benefited by my parking my SUV? The unemployed working men?
I have been looking to buy a hybrid SUV. There aren't any! Toyota Highlander can't tow a wet napkin. The Ford Escape ditto. These vehicles cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be called an SUV.
The Chevy Tahoe seems to be vaporware, although I saw an ad for a dealer that claims to have one a few days ago. Even so, it can only tow about half a workload. My current SUV tows 10,000 lbs. Up a long steep hill. In the snow. Chevy claims 6000 lbs towing for the Tahoe Hybrid. Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it. When they actually start delivering them.
Yeah, the high prices are chasing away the soccer-mom crowd. But those big Escalades you SUV haters love to hate so well?
News flash for ya. Anyone who can afford an Escalade isn't going to pay any attention at all to fuel prices.
Further, some Soccer-moms really do need them. Try hauling around a bunch of kids and all their sports equipment if ya don't believe me. Minivans? Maybe. But a mini-van can't match a real SUV if you really need to haul stuff. The smaller crossovers might make a reasonable compromise, but they are not really SUVs, and in fact are far closer to a mini-van than an SUV.
But pity the poor working man who needs a real SUV, or even worse a real truck. He's in real pain, or more likely just plain out of work.
An SUV is a safe vehicle, all you SUV haters notwithstanding. Yeah, try to drive them like a sports car, and you can roll em over sometimes. That's a bad thing. Rolling any vehicle is a bad thing. Not limited to SUVs. Drive them sensibly and that's not an issue. Rolling a vehicle bespeaks a bad/stupid/incompetent driver. Lots of vehicles roll over real easy, not just SUVs. You must respect ANY vehicle's performance envelop.
If I am destined to hit an immovable object anytime soon, I hope I do so in my SUV, and not the little crackerbox family car I drive when I'm not working. For that matter, if I am going to be in a vehicle that rolls over, I'd chose the SUV any time over the car. But SUV haters aside, reasonably competent drivers rarely hit things, and rarely roll over.
Well, it helped (or hurt, depending) that Tesla was an inept businessman with no instinct for managing his assets. Tesla's failure is a perfect example of a brilliant engineer and scientist who is totally incompetent with business and money. Such people often lose fortunes to the vagaries of business, and then blame others for their failures. How do I know about this? It happened to me!! Only now I have learned better, and won't let it happen again. But my oh my was it ever an expensive education.
Please, Please show me where to buy electricity for $0.10/kWh. Please.
Here in Northern California, I'm paying over $.30/kWh thanks to the obscene baseline pricing scam. And it only gets higher as I use more. An electric car? It ain't gonna be cheap!!
I have a very nice and entertaining class I put together years ago. They are not bored, and when they're done, they've actually learned something.
I've given it countless times in the corporate setting and found it very effective. Been doing it in one form or another since the 1980's. Yes, before the web. Ever read Cuckoo's Egg? I was there.
I didn't say Windows firewall is good enough. I said I put any machine of mine behind a HARDWARE firewall, or in my personal case, two of them with a DMZ between them. Then I use Windows Firewall as "belt and suspenders" additional security. Or Zonealarm if an NT (yes I still have NT) or other old machine.
When I set up systems for friends I always use a HARDWARE firewall as well.
NEVER, NEVER connect a naked machine directly to the net. NEVER!
I do keep a couple of old disposable laptops around for when and if I have to get online outside the firewall. They have no personal info on them, and I ghost the HD after allowing them out of the cage.
And we're NOT already? And exactly how are these bloatware apps stopping it?
Virtually every infected machine I've seen has Symantec or similar running. Improperly, true, but my point is that clueless people putting their trust in some "security suite" they don't understand and ignoring the issue is exactly the wrong prescription.
I would be all for a "security suite" that actually worked. But in my experience, they work poorly or not at all, give a false sense of security to the uneducated, and drain your bank account and slow your machine, and often cause problems of their own.
Far far better to nuke this trash from the machine and spend your efforts on things that actually work. i.e. A few good tools that are useful and educating users in how to use them.
People who refuse to take the responsibility to learn a few basics about keeping their machines bot-free should not be allowed on the net. Just as you have to learn some basic rules of the road to drive a car, you should have some elementary security awareness to get on the net.
Now enforcing that is a whole nother can of worms. But I for one do NOT encourage people (my mother, for one) who are not up to a minimal level of awareness to get on the net. And when I set up a new user, I insist they allow me to give them a bit of training. I have set up a number of clueless new users, and when I am through with them they know how to surf safely.
The ones who "already know how to use computers" and won't take my class are the ones who install the bloatware security apps and then load their machines up on malware.
I didn't say anything about abstinence. I have a ton of stuff that's not exactly appropriate for Sunday School. But I don't go to sites known for pushing malware. And when I've been to a site that I might suspect, I immediately check my system for anything untoward.
Only nasty that got to me in the last ten years was the damn X10 adware and I quickly nuked that and refuse to visit their site again, ever. I put them in my hosts file with a redirect to the localhost.
Last year I set up a system for a newbie, a retired history teacher who didn't know a browser from a word processor. He had used the web a little under the school IT umbrella, but was mostly clueless. Not exactly my parents, but close.
After spending several hours explaining malware, adware and the like to him, and cautioning him about what to avoid, I nuked Symmantic and it's relatives.
A year later, he is computing along nicely, no viruses, no problems.
Shortly after, I set up a computer for my daughter, a 30-something who is fairly computer literate, but not exactly an engineer, if you get my drift. She insisted on installing the full suite of security protection. When I tried to give her some pointers about safe computing, I got that glazed look and a "yes dad I know how to use computers"
Three times in the last year, I have had to "fix" her machine. Two other occasions I had to fiddle with her firewall as it was blocking something it shouldn't for no reason.
Give me a clueless newbie who will listen and nor Norton every time!!!
Only the free version, and only on machines that do not have the Windows firewall. I agree a firewall is needed. I just don't think blindly following their 'install everything and send us money' policy is right.
Maybe I'm an old stick in the mud. But I've had far, far more trouble CAUSED by most of these applications than I've seen prevented.
When I get a new computer, the first thing I do is Nuke ALL of these things from the hard drive. I also tell Windows not to auto update. Never had a virus or infection.
I do keep my machines behind a double firewall, and I do use the default Windows firewall in XP, or the free ZoneAlarm on my older machines.. And I do frequently scan using one of the many free adware and virus checkers just to be safe. But perhaps most importantly, I'm really, really careful about opening email attachments and what web sites I go to. As for the updates, occasionally I go to Windows update and review the "fixes" and install those that look interesting or benign.
But Symantec, Norton, McAfee and the like I do not allow anywhere near any machine of mine, and I heavily discourage friends and family from using them.
Safe computing is NOT blindly installing some "security package" and going to sleep.
I keep hearing that solar panels are coming down. I don't see it. Five years ago I priced out an 11,000 watt system. Estimates put it at around $75,000. Last month I repriced a similar system with a different vendor using the latest panels. Estimate was $83,000.
There are certainly unknowns between the estimates of two different vendors five years apart, but nonetheless the price went up, not down. If prices were dropping as claimed, I would not have expected that.
Also, estimating power usage on a 40 year time horizon, and applying an inflation factor of 5% per year, I estimated I could buy the same lifetime power from PG&E for under $40k.
When I can install that 11,000 watt system for $35-40k, I'll write the check. Until then I'll stick with PG&E.
I just looked at a large (11,000 watt) intertie system to power my small ranch. The estimated cost to install the system after all rebates was over $80k. Thus for $80k I could make a lifetime (40 year was the definition of "Lifetime" I used) buy of all the electricity I would need. That seemed good until I realized that even with a 5% per year increase in the cost of even very expensive PG&E supplied electricity, I could buy the same amount of power from the utility for under $40k.
Thus, even with a 40 year span, Solar, even with rebates, costs more than twice what conventional utility supplied electricity costs. Perhaps if we used an 80 or 100 year period, but I kinda doubt I will be around to care much beyond 40 years.
If it were even close to break-even I would buy in a minute. But it simply doesn't make any reasonable payback. How can folks claim it does?
But will it make sense to replace a worn-out battery pack in a 10 year old Prius, or will the car then end up in the junkyard?
The life cycle of a car is not limited to the time it's first owner drives it but rather how long the car stays on the road. When considering the environmental impact of any car (or anything, for that matter) you have to consider it's entire life cycle. If a car got 500 MPG, but was environmentally expensive to manufacture and only lasted 10 years before being junked (er, excuse me, "recycled"), it would be much less environmentally friendly than a conventional 15 mpg SUV that lasted 25 years.
Any modern, better quality vehicle can be driven 20+ years without major expense. I just sold my 1986 model a couple of months ago, and it was still in very serviceable condition, easily good for several more years. Yes, the paint was faded, and a few minor repairs were needed, but it was still an excellent and reliable machine.
With the price of Prius batteries, I seriously doubt many people would repair a ten or twelve year old car with a dead battery.
We need much better battery technology before hybrids make sense. But I guess it is important to get the machines out there and get the technology accepted in the marketplace while research continues. Still, I cannot help but consider current generation hybrids as the beta release.
I think the fundamental mistake is that Hollywood is pushing Science Fiction as the end-game, or central point, of the movie, rather than simply the environment whereby a genuine story is presented.
Star Wars succeeds, more or less, as decent SF, if "Space Opera", because it's story would work just as well if set in medieval days and was told as farm-boy against the knights of the evil emperor. The sequels fail by the same measure since they are totally dependent on the Star Wars SCi-Fi elements and without those there is little story. They only succeeded to the extent they did because of the coat-tails of Star Wars.
Start with a good story, one that can be told in any environment, and then subtly weave the Sci-Fi elements into it, and it will be a good Sci-Fi movie. Start with space ships and ray guns and try to create a story around them, and it will be Hollywood dreck.
This is so basic, so obvious, that I cannot understand why Hollywood keeps missing it.
I for one am a little sick of SF that tries to "comment on the human condition". Not that we need more of the formula action flicks that Hollywood has been churning out.
But great Space Opera should be mindless escapism to an extent. 'Doc' Smith defined Space Opera starting in the 1920's, followed (sometimes) by Heinlein and now 75 years later nothing from either author has made it to the big screen in any recognizable form (I don't count the animated Lensmen, or the couple of movies that used Heinlein's titles but otherwise ignored the book).
My idea of the ideal Space Opera would be more like 'Skylark' or 'Spacehounds of the IPC' than 'Blade Runner'
Another sub-genre (but not exactly Space Opera)classic I'd like to see made into a serious movie is 'Glory Road'. Heck I'd even love to see another try at 'Puppet Masters' or 'Starship Soldiers' if they could find someone who would make it faithful to the book.
The problem is not lack of good material, but producers without the guts to push something that is not 'Me Too' and already been done to death.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to live for his regular columns. I loved his wit, and curmudgeonly attitude. I met him a few times and found him the same in person as he was in print. He will be missed. Yeah, VW beetles were dangerous little cars. I drove one for years (a 1964 model) and I was very careful, and knew what a death trap they could be. But how many of us ride motorcycles, or other dangerous vehicles. Life is a series of risks. I guess we could wrap ourselves in cotton balls and stay home. He was not a "damned fool" just a human being who chose to do something he knew was risky, who no doubt weighed the risks, and decided to go ahead.
Robert A. Heinlein in his 1957 time-travel novel described exactly this idea in detail when his protagonist awoke in the "far distant" year of 2000. So it is hardly new.
I live in the outskirts of a major metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay Area. I cannot get what a slashdoter would consider broadband in any form. The local Telco insists they want to sell me 6 Mbit DSL and that they can serve me. But they simply cannot. The local DSLAM is over 18,000 feet from my door, and it is full with no available ports. Further, the lines that serve me have load coils on them which the Telco refuses to remove. Because of the load coils, even dial-up sucks. I have been fighting them, begging them for ten years to give me service. Further, they have a cell phone site less than 1000 feet from my door, could put a DSLAM there and serve me nicely but refuse. Yet hardly a week goes by that I do not get a letter or phone call trying to sell me a service that they do not have and cannot deliver. As for Cable? They are not within 2 miles of me. We need some oversight to force the Telco to actually provide the service they claim to be able to. By removing load coils and upgrading the DSLAM they could probably give me 384 KBPS. Not quite real broadband, but better than what I have now. But they refuse. By putting a DSLAM in the cell phone facility, they could easily give me 6 mbps, but refuse. They have dark fiber that is sitting unused in the cell site, but won't sell me service. Yet they constantly bug me to buy their nonexistent service. I am not usually a proponent of government intervention, but I do not see any other way to force them to deliver service. They want the relatively easy low-hanging fruit, but refuse to upgrade the infrastructure to serve the more marginal cases.
No it can't. Many many people, including yours truly cannot buy health insurance for any price. I am healthy, no pre-existing conditions, and have money in the bank. I am also gray-haired and unemployed. They won't take my money and I've tried and tried.
Actually, you're quite wrong. I want to avoid closed "off-the-shelf" products if at all possible. But I want a really good system, and am trying to learn what is available in the Linux world that will meet my needs. I am leaning heavily toward Zoneminder, but want to know about alternatives I may have missed. I am planning a large server infrastructure that will include applications such as Asterisk, MythTV and even Misterhouse. I am very much wondering as well about sharing server platforms, thus looking for caveats about combining, say, Asterisk and a few security cameras on the same server. Frankly, your post is offensive and does not contribute to the discussion. Stony
A few years ago I began to notice I was reading fewer and fewer stories. For every one I enjoyed, there would be one that was inane and incomprehensible. Then there would be more and more worthless ones, and fewer and fewer good ones.
When I began to see more and more issues that were entirely devoid of Science Fiction content, and filled with inane trash, I became more and more unhappy with them. I started just tossing each new issue on the shelf unopened, perhaps getting around to checking them out weeks later.
I finally realized I hadn't found an issue worth reading in over a year, and renewal time came up. I wrote them a nice letter and explained why I was dropping them. I promised to check the newsstand issues for content and that I would resubscribe when I started seeing something I wanted to read. That was three years ago.
They've been dead a long time. It is time to bury the corpse.
Stony
Second point, everyone rapping on about how the capacitors won't last are mostly ignorant people repeating stuff they've heard. The capacitors that won't last are the cheapo junk capacitors made in China. Quality caps last just fine. I have a "Junk box" full of quality American and Japanese made caps dating from the 1960's and 1970's that I STILL use as repair parts when I need a capacitor. Never have had a bad one, and I'm talking boxes of hundreds of them.
Of course, most of the computers you are talking about are probably filled with crap Chinese capacitors. On the other hand, if they're already a decade old, maybe not. The China junk usually dies in a couple of years. I've repaired many a two year old computer whose capacitors have failed.
I have quality Collins radios from the 1940's that still have all original caps (and tubes) and still work fine. On the other hand, I have a very expensive 7.1 channel surround sound amp system, about 5 years old, and it's power supply caps went out recently. I pulled out a couple caps from my junk box, caps old enough to vote, wired em in, and the Amp lives on.
Media, yeah, that's another story. Most will be unreadable in 50 years. Quality optical might have a chance. Paper tape will last. Yeah, that's the ticket. Print the MSDOS install disks to paper tape! That'll work ;) Windows will need a LOT of tape.
Stony
A C-Band dish with a digital receiver has access to more programming, a better signal and lower prices for programming than anything Dish or Direct offer. It even gets HDTV! I have been using one for 8 years, and wouldn'y trade for the little dish product on a bet! Use it as intended!! Much better!
Admittedly, SUVs are often driven by people who don't need them, and wrecked by people who confuse their SUV with a sports car and try to drive it inappropriately. Such stupid behavior deserves criticism. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that a lot of people NEED an SUV for their work.
I drive an SUV. I will continue to drive the SUV regardless of how high the price of fuel goes, for one simple reason. I need a vehicle that can haul five working men, a boat load of tools and tow a construction trailer full of materials. But the high fuel prices are severely hurting my ability to make a living.
Carried to the ultimate extreme, the high fuel prices are going to cause me to stop working, stop employing tradesmen, stop buying construction materials, and so on. I am of an age and financial ability to simply retire and stop fighting the battles. Who has benefited by my parking my SUV? The unemployed working men?
I have been looking to buy a hybrid SUV. There aren't any! Toyota Highlander can't tow a wet napkin. The Ford Escape ditto. These vehicles cannot, by any stretch of the imagination be called an SUV.
The Chevy Tahoe seems to be vaporware, although I saw an ad for a dealer that claims to have one a few days ago. Even so, it can only tow about half a workload. My current SUV tows 10,000 lbs. Up a long steep hill. In the snow. Chevy claims 6000 lbs towing for the Tahoe Hybrid. Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it. When they actually start delivering them.
Yeah, the high prices are chasing away the soccer-mom crowd. But those big Escalades you SUV haters love to hate so well?
News flash for ya. Anyone who can afford an Escalade isn't going to pay any attention at all to fuel prices.
Further, some Soccer-moms really do need them. Try hauling around a bunch of kids and all their sports equipment if ya don't believe me. Minivans? Maybe. But a mini-van can't match a real SUV if you really need to haul stuff. The smaller crossovers might make a reasonable compromise, but they are not really SUVs, and in fact are far closer to a mini-van than an SUV.
But pity the poor working man who needs a real SUV, or even worse a real truck. He's in real pain, or more likely just plain out of work.
An SUV is a safe vehicle, all you SUV haters notwithstanding. Yeah, try to drive them like a sports car, and you can roll em over sometimes. That's a bad thing. Rolling any vehicle is a bad thing. Not limited to SUVs. Drive them sensibly and that's not an issue. Rolling a vehicle bespeaks a bad/stupid/incompetent driver. Lots of vehicles roll over real easy, not just SUVs. You must respect ANY vehicle's performance envelop.
If I am destined to hit an immovable object anytime soon, I hope I do so in my SUV, and not the little crackerbox family car I drive when I'm not working. For that matter, if I am going to be in a vehicle that rolls over, I'd chose the SUV any time over the car. But SUV haters aside, reasonably competent drivers rarely hit things, and rarely roll over.
Stony
Well, it helped (or hurt, depending) that Tesla was an inept businessman with no instinct for managing his assets. Tesla's failure is a perfect example of a brilliant engineer and scientist who is totally incompetent with business and money. Such people often lose fortunes to the vagaries of business, and then blame others for their failures. How do I know about this? It happened to me!! Only now I have learned better, and won't let it happen again. But my oh my was it ever an expensive education.
Please, Please show me where to buy electricity for $0.10/kWh. Please.
Here in Northern California, I'm paying over $.30/kWh thanks to the obscene baseline pricing scam. And it only gets higher as I use more. An electric car? It ain't gonna be cheap!!
Stony
I have a very nice and entertaining class I put together years ago. They are not bored, and when they're done, they've actually learned something.
I've given it countless times in the corporate setting and found it very effective. Been doing it in one form or another since the 1980's. Yes, before the web. Ever read Cuckoo's Egg? I was there.
Stony
I didn't say Windows firewall is good enough. I said I put any machine of mine behind a HARDWARE firewall, or in my personal case, two of them with a DMZ between them. Then I use Windows Firewall as "belt and suspenders" additional security. Or Zonealarm if an NT (yes I still have NT) or other old machine.
When I set up systems for friends I always use a HARDWARE firewall as well.
NEVER, NEVER connect a naked machine directly to the net. NEVER!
I do keep a couple of old disposable laptops around for when and if I have to get online outside the firewall. They have no personal info on them, and I ghost the HD after allowing them out of the cage.
Does that make you feel better?
Stony
And we're NOT already? And exactly how are these bloatware apps stopping it?
Virtually every infected machine I've seen has Symantec or similar running. Improperly, true, but my point is that clueless people putting their trust in some "security suite" they don't understand and ignoring the issue is exactly the wrong prescription.
I would be all for a "security suite" that actually worked. But in my experience, they work poorly or not at all, give a false sense of security to the uneducated, and drain your bank account and slow your machine, and often cause problems of their own.
Far far better to nuke this trash from the machine and spend your efforts on things that actually work. i.e. A few good tools that are useful and educating users in how to use them.
People who refuse to take the responsibility to learn a few basics about keeping their machines bot-free should not be allowed on the net. Just as you have to learn some basic rules of the road to drive a car, you should have some elementary security awareness to get on the net.
Now enforcing that is a whole nother can of worms. But I for one do NOT encourage people (my mother, for one) who are not up to a minimal level of awareness to get on the net. And when I set up a new user, I insist they allow me to give them a bit of training. I have set up a number of clueless new users, and when I am through with them they know how to surf safely.
The ones who "already know how to use computers" and won't take my class are the ones who install the bloatware security apps and then load their machines up on malware.
Stony
Abso-damn-lutely!!
I didn't say anything about abstinence. I have a ton of stuff that's not exactly appropriate for Sunday School. But I don't go to sites known for pushing malware. And when I've been to a site that I might suspect, I immediately check my system for anything untoward.
Only nasty that got to me in the last ten years was the damn X10 adware and I quickly nuked that and refuse to visit their site again, ever. I put them in my hosts file with a redirect to the localhost.
Well, I have agonized over this point.
Last year I set up a system for a newbie, a retired history teacher who didn't know a browser from a word processor. He had used the web a little under the school IT umbrella, but was mostly clueless. Not exactly my parents, but close.
After spending several hours explaining malware, adware and the like to him, and cautioning him about what to avoid, I nuked Symmantic and it's relatives.
A year later, he is computing along nicely, no viruses, no problems.
Shortly after, I set up a computer for my daughter, a 30-something who is fairly computer literate, but not exactly an engineer, if you get my drift. She insisted on installing the full suite of security protection. When I tried to give her some pointers about safe computing, I got that glazed look and a "yes dad I know how to use computers"
Three times in the last year, I have had to "fix" her machine. Two other occasions I had to fiddle with her firewall as it was blocking something it shouldn't for no reason.
Give me a clueless newbie who will listen and nor Norton every time!!!
Stony
I didn't say I leave it unpatched. I just don't allow Microsoft to decide what patches I need or when I need them.
Only the free version, and only on machines that do not have the Windows firewall. I agree a firewall is needed. I just don't think blindly following their 'install everything and send us money' policy is right.
Maybe I'm an old stick in the mud. But I've had far, far more trouble CAUSED by most of these applications than I've seen prevented.
When I get a new computer, the first thing I do is Nuke ALL of these things from the hard drive. I also tell Windows not to auto update. Never had a virus or infection.
I do keep my machines behind a double firewall, and I do use the default Windows firewall in XP, or the free ZoneAlarm on my older machines.. And I do frequently scan using one of the many free adware and virus checkers just to be safe. But perhaps most importantly, I'm really, really careful about opening email attachments and what web sites I go to. As for the updates, occasionally I go to Windows update and review the "fixes" and install those that look interesting or benign.
But Symantec, Norton, McAfee and the like I do not allow anywhere near any machine of mine, and I heavily discourage friends and family from using them.
Safe computing is NOT blindly installing some "security package" and going to sleep.
Stony
I keep hearing that solar panels are coming down. I don't see it. Five years ago I priced out an 11,000 watt system. Estimates put it at around $75,000. Last month I repriced a similar system with a different vendor using the latest panels. Estimate was $83,000.
There are certainly unknowns between the estimates of two different vendors five years apart, but nonetheless the price went up, not down. If prices were dropping as claimed, I would not have expected that.
Also, estimating power usage on a 40 year time horizon, and applying an inflation factor of 5% per year, I estimated I could buy the same lifetime power from PG&E for under $40k.
When I can install that 11,000 watt system for $35-40k, I'll write the check. Until then I'll stick with PG&E.
Stony
Someone please explain this to me.
I just looked at a large (11,000 watt) intertie system to power my small ranch. The estimated cost to install the system after all rebates was over $80k. Thus for $80k I could make a lifetime (40 year was the definition of "Lifetime" I used) buy of all the electricity I would need. That seemed good until I realized that even with a 5% per year increase in the cost of even very expensive PG&E supplied electricity, I could buy the same amount of power from the utility for under $40k.
Thus, even with a 40 year span, Solar, even with rebates, costs more than twice what conventional utility supplied electricity costs. Perhaps if we used an 80 or 100 year period, but I kinda doubt I will be around to care much beyond 40 years.
If it were even close to break-even I would buy in a minute. But it simply doesn't make any reasonable payback. How can folks claim it does?
Stony
But will it make sense to replace a worn-out battery pack in a 10 year old Prius, or will the car then end up in the junkyard?
The life cycle of a car is not limited to the time it's first owner drives it but rather how long the car stays on the road. When considering the environmental impact of any car (or anything, for that matter) you have to consider it's entire life cycle. If a car got 500 MPG, but was environmentally expensive to manufacture and only lasted 10 years before being junked (er, excuse me, "recycled"), it would be much less environmentally friendly than a conventional 15 mpg SUV that lasted 25 years.
Any modern, better quality vehicle can be driven 20+ years without major expense. I just sold my 1986 model a couple of months ago, and it was still in very serviceable condition, easily good for several more years. Yes, the paint was faded, and a few minor repairs were needed, but it was still an excellent and reliable machine.
With the price of Prius batteries, I seriously doubt many people would repair a ten or twelve year old car with a dead battery.
We need much better battery technology before hybrids make sense. But I guess it is important to get the machines out there and get the technology accepted in the marketplace while research continues. Still, I cannot help but consider current generation hybrids as the beta release.
Stony
I think the fundamental mistake is that Hollywood is pushing Science Fiction as the end-game, or central point, of the movie, rather than simply the environment whereby a genuine story is presented.
Star Wars succeeds, more or less, as decent SF, if "Space Opera", because it's story would work just as well if set in medieval days and was told as farm-boy against the knights of the evil emperor. The sequels fail by the same measure since they are totally dependent on the Star Wars SCi-Fi elements and without those there is little story. They only succeeded to the extent they did because of the coat-tails of Star Wars.
Start with a good story, one that can be told in any environment, and then subtly weave the Sci-Fi elements into it, and it will be a good Sci-Fi movie. Start with space ships and ray guns and try to create a story around them, and it will be Hollywood dreck.
This is so basic, so obvious, that I cannot understand why Hollywood keeps missing it.
I for one am a little sick of SF that tries to "comment on the human condition". Not that we need more of the formula action flicks that Hollywood has been churning out.
But great Space Opera should be mindless escapism to an extent. 'Doc' Smith defined Space Opera starting in the 1920's, followed (sometimes) by Heinlein and now 75 years later nothing from either author has made it to the big screen in any recognizable form (I don't count the animated Lensmen, or the couple of movies that used Heinlein's titles but otherwise ignored the book).
My idea of the ideal Space Opera would be more like 'Skylark' or 'Spacehounds of the IPC' than 'Blade Runner'
Another sub-genre (but not exactly Space Opera)classic I'd like to see made into a serious movie is 'Glory Road'. Heck I'd even love to see another try at 'Puppet Masters' or 'Starship Soldiers' if they could find someone who would make it faithful to the book.
The problem is not lack of good material, but producers without the guts to push something that is not 'Me Too' and already been done to death.