I happened to notice this at the bottom of the page. Following the link led me to Capitol Advantage's web site. Their About page tells me that: "Capitol Advantage is the nation's premier provider of grassroots solutions for corporations, nonprofit groups, associations, educational institutions, and other organizations. Founded in 1986, Capitol Advantage provides grassroots advocacy products and services to more than 2,000 organizations, including some of the nation's largest and most respected portals and media companies as well as trade associations, nonprofit organizations and corporations.
Whether you are looking for a comprehensive online grassroots action center, personalized congressional and media print directories, or hands-on strategic and tactical consulting support, Capitol Advantage is the only source of support you will need."
Somehow their definition of 'grassroots' sounds a bit more like my definition of 'astroturf' than anything actually grassroots related.
This Capitol Advantage might just deserve watching...
"That's like somebody advocating the use of torx screws as opposed to phillips head."
As I see it, it's more like advocating buying from local coffeshops and video stores rather than giving your money to Starbucks and Blockbuster. The programs themselves are tools, but who gets your money does make a difference. Also, those producing the tools benefit from having more users.
The sad fact is, there's a company out there producing software with monopoly power. At times it has even been known to abuse that power. Some even suspect that this company is actively seeking more power and that it might begin being abusive to its customers if it feels that it has no competition to worry about. Open Source/Free Software is seen by many as a (perhaps the only) hope of competition in the software world. Personally, I find this to be reason to consider Open Source first when looking for software tools.
I used to be pretty close myself - off of Old Billerica Rd in Bedford. Is there still a Bel Canto restaurant in Lexington? That's probably my favorite pizza I've had anywhere with the possbile exception of some homemade. (I live in California now - there is no pizza worth eating here, pity me).
"Please explain how that's not a directory tree. "cp/dev/hda [destination]" - not "/mnt". It looks to me like it copies the disk image."
Yes, it copies the disk image. And it puts it on the next hard drive in exactly the same state as it was on the first - as a tree of directories, with a huge collection of separate files, etc. I should have been more specific. Ghost will take the image and make a single image file, which can be much easier to work with.
"I don't see why you're asking about filesystems, since he's operating on the raw device. If you wanted to compress.. "cat/dev/hda | bzip2 -c > [destination]" is what you want. It'll even work with NTFS filesystems.:-)"
No, you don't see at all. Have you ever tried to bzip a raw 40GB NTFS partition with 1GB of data on it? You will get a file that's a good deal larger than 1GB. This is because bz2 doesn't understand NTFS well enough to know which are the empty blocks so it treats all of it as data.
Yep. The plan works best if you split up into at least 2 partitions, one for Windows, one for apps (I prefer at least 4: one more for data, and the Windows swap file set to fixed size and on a partition all by itself) and then re-ghost the relevant partition (usually just the Win partition, but it's good to ghost the apps and data from time to time just to be safe) before and after any major install that might screw things up (MS service packs come to mind, new hardware also). This has saved my butt on at least two occasions personally, and it also allowed me to 'uninstall' some horrible version of IE I tried out once, which otherwise would have allowed no easy way of getting your system back in order.
This all probably sounds pretty extreme, but it makes Windows feel safer and more workable for me.
Maybe sometime some of the Prox hotshots will look into Privoxy too. *fingers crossed* That's really the main reason I haven't switched over yet - I don't think the filter sets are quite as sophisticated on Privoxy yet.
Is that really gonna help the poster of this article? Nope. He only uses Windows.
And will it compress Win32 filesystems properly? Oh no, wait, you're not compressing at all. How are you going to fit that image onto a CD? Oh, wait, that's not an image, it's just a directory tree.
Very helpful post otherwise - oh, wait, you weren't trying to be helpful, you were trying to prove that you've got more geek chops than I do. I'll do my best to be impressed, really.
Do you know if it can compress Win32 filesystems? I think it was Mondo I checked out before that couldn't handle this. This is essential for fitting the image onto a CD.
"Proxomitron (this is old now, might look for sommat else?)"
I'm still using Proxomitron too, but, since it's gone unsupported, when I get around to it I'll probably switch over to Privoxy. Just figured I'd mention it in case you hadn't run into this yet.
"Who in their right mind (excluding users) would think of installing software without installing ALL the patches for the OS they are using..."
Not sure, maybe the same person who ends up having to format and reinstall his OS at least once a month? (Not saying poster was in his right mind...)
Seriously though, a note to reddigitaldragon: If you know you're gonna reinstall and you know what you're gonna put on the system after installing, you really should invest in a copy of Ghost (or DriveImage, but I haven't worked with that, so I can't personally vouch for its functionality). It'll save you several hours each month. Do your install once, install your progs, defrag (for good measure) make a Ghost image, burn it to CD along with ghost.exe and next time the whole process will take you ~10 minutes.
I just recently (last night) discovered syn, an editor that, among other things, can function as a console window. Like I said, I just discovered it and I have barely started trying it out, so I can't tell you yet how well it works. Try it out for yourself - it sounds to me like what you were looking for.
>I never said I bought from ITMS. I said that if I did, I would have to jump through more hoops than I'd like to put the songs on my non-iPod MP3 player.
I see, sorry, I guess I misread your hypothetical. it makes sense when I read it with the above comment in mind.
>I get my music in MP3 format from allofmp3.com, because it is faster than P2P.
Just went to check it out, is the site down or something? I get no response from the server.
I don't understand how you reconcile "Boycott the RIAA" (your sig at the time of my posting) and buying from ITMS. Doesn't about 90% of the money from your ITMS purchase go to the RIAA?
OK, I know I'm late to this party, but hopefully you're still reading reponses.
My evolution has been a bit different than yours (Atari 800/Apple ][ instead of TRS-80, never became an exec), but the net effect is the same: I used to program, and even was considered good, but now I'm barely a dabbler in it and I want to re-learn.
I found a really good tutorial called How to Design Programs. I've looked at/tried a lot of tutorials over the years, and I believe this is one of the best. The language it teaches is Scheme, buit that's almost irrelevent, as it's not getting into the nitty-gritty of the language, just using it as a tool to teach programming and design concepts. I'm going though it right now, and really enjoying it. Most other tutorials on programming I've run into to seem to be more interested in showing little details of their chosen language, and assuming a knowledge (or at least saving for later the lessons on) basic programming concepts.
Anyways, take a look - I hope it works out for you!
" Those "free" programs you speak of were shareware, and users were on thier honor to pay for them eventually if they continued to use it."
Not true. There has always been true freeware for Windows. Back when I used to have more need for it, one of the best sites for freeware was NoNags. Take a look at their listing guidelines to see for yourself whether these are really shareware.
All that said, I haven't tried to use the site in several months, so I don't really know how good the selection is these days - or whether quality is as high as I remember it.
...That Xerox tries to sue this guy to take down the information?
Not sure what law they'd pull out of their hat for the job, especially since this guy is not US based, but this just seems like it's raining on their parade a bit too much for Xerox to not pull out the lawyers.
"... I hope he doesn't start dictating who else can and cannnot use his precious logo."
He already has:
If you either
promote somebody's product for money or break into other peoples' computers, those of us the emblem was invented for do not want you displaying it. Go invent your own emblem. We'll find some way to shame and reject you publicly if you mess with ours.
I'm disallowed, since I currently work as a salesman. I probably wouldn't wear/display it anyway, since I neither feel I'm enough of a hacker to deserve recognitioon nor feel insecure enough to try to get the recognition from wearing/displaying some "exclusive" logo.
I'm an old time HP calc user (still have my trusty 12C (which is still running on original batteries!) and my 48G) I first fell in love with them back when I was in high school and a friend of the family brought his old (pocket size LED display model, not sure which) HP over and taught me how to use it.
I recently got a Palm OS device I can use, a Treo 300 (I'm Graffiti-challenged - way to sloppy a handwriter to ever train myself to make the symbols consistently enough) and have been looking around for a good RPN calculator for it. So far I'm using RPN, a simple RPN calc released freely under the GPL, but I've also discovered another one that I'm tempted to check out even though it's probably way more than I actually need these days. From the sound of it, if this calc is all it claims to be, it may be exactly what the poster was looking for (if he/she has a Palm device). There are also several other versions for whatever your needs.
I am not associated with Infinity Softwaorks, the developers of this calculator. In fact I haven't even tried the calculator I mentioned, I just happened to have discovered it recently and thought it was relevant.
"The strategies of Chess are pretty well defined, with Grand Masters easily able to say why one move is better than another. With Go, players simply reply that a move "felt right"."
I think you're misinformed. It is true that there are "players" who will respond that a move "felt right", and I am even one of those players who would respond that way in many cases, but I would also respond that way when explaining the reason I made a particular chess move - and I would estimate that my skill level in each game is roughly equivalent - (~1450 ELO for chess, 10 kyu in Go - better than the best go playing programs, IIRC). "Masters" in Go (Pro- level Dan players), or even advanced amateurs (Amateur dans and near-dan Kyu players) can generally explain why a given move is good (or bad) and effectively teach less experienced players both general concepts and specific tactics and strategies. I have several books on Go which do exactly that. If all they had to say was that a move "feels right" they wouldn't be of much use as learning tools.
Slashdot Mirror
I happened to notice this at the bottom of the page. Following the link led me to Capitol Advantage's web site. Their About page tells me that:
"Capitol Advantage is the nation's premier provider of grassroots solutions for corporations, nonprofit groups, associations, educational institutions, and other organizations. Founded in 1986, Capitol Advantage provides grassroots advocacy products and services to more than 2,000 organizations, including some of the nation's largest and most respected portals and media companies as well as trade associations, nonprofit organizations and corporations.
Whether you are looking for a comprehensive online grassroots action center, personalized congressional and media print directories, or hands-on strategic and tactical consulting support, Capitol Advantage is the only source of support you will need."
Somehow their definition of 'grassroots' sounds a bit more like my definition of 'astroturf' than anything actually grassroots related.
This Capitol Advantage might just deserve watching...
"That's like somebody advocating the use of torx screws as opposed to phillips head."
As I see it, it's more like advocating buying from local coffeshops and video stores rather than giving your money to Starbucks and Blockbuster. The programs themselves are tools, but who gets your money does make a difference. Also, those producing the tools benefit from having more users.
The sad fact is, there's a company out there producing software with monopoly power. At times it has even been known to abuse that power. Some even suspect that this company is actively seeking more power and that it might begin being abusive to its customers if it feels that it has no competition to worry about. Open Source/Free Software is seen by many as a (perhaps the only) hope of competition in the software world. Personally, I find this to be reason to consider Open Source first when looking for software tools.
I used to be pretty close myself - off of Old Billerica Rd in Bedford. Is there still a Bel Canto restaurant in Lexington? That's probably my favorite pizza I've had anywhere with the possbile exception of some homemade. (I live in California now - there is no pizza worth eating here, pity me).
I just downloaded 3.4 yesterday.
"Please explain how that's not a directory tree. /dev/hda [destination]" - not "/mnt".
/dev/hda | bzip2 -c > [destination]" is what you want. It'll even work with NTFS filesystems. :-)"
"cp
It looks to me like it copies the disk image."
Yes, it copies the disk image. And it puts it on the next hard drive in exactly the same state as it was on the first - as a tree of directories, with a huge collection of separate files, etc. I should have been more specific. Ghost will take the image and make a single image file, which can be much easier to work with.
"I don't see why you're asking about filesystems, since he's operating on the raw device. If you wanted to compress.. "cat
No, you don't see at all. Have you ever tried to bzip a raw 40GB NTFS partition with 1GB of data on it? You will get a file that's a good deal larger than 1GB. This is because bz2 doesn't understand NTFS well enough to know which are the empty blocks so it treats all of it as data.
Yep. The plan works best if you split up into at least 2 partitions, one for Windows, one for apps (I prefer at least 4: one more for data, and the Windows swap file set to fixed size and on a partition all by itself) and then re-ghost the relevant partition (usually just the Win partition, but it's good to ghost the apps and data from time to time just to be safe) before and after any major install that might screw things up (MS service packs come to mind, new hardware also). This has saved my butt on at least two occasions personally, and it also allowed me to 'uninstall' some horrible version of IE I tried out once, which otherwise would have allowed no easy way of getting your system back in order.
This all probably sounds pretty extreme, but it makes Windows feel safer and more workable for me.
Yep, JD5000 is great.
Maybe sometime some of the Prox hotshots will look into Privoxy too. *fingers crossed* That's really the main reason I haven't switched over yet - I don't think the filter sets are quite as sophisticated on Privoxy yet.
Is that really gonna help the poster of this article? Nope. He only uses Windows.
And will it compress Win32 filesystems properly? Oh no, wait, you're not compressing at all. How are you going to fit that image onto a CD? Oh, wait, that's not an image, it's just a directory tree.
Very helpful post otherwise - oh, wait, you weren't trying to be helpful, you were trying to prove that you've got more geek chops than I do. I'll do my best to be impressed, really.
Looks handy. Downloading now, thanks.
Do you know if it can compress Win32 filesystems? I think it was Mondo I checked out before that couldn't handle this. This is essential for fitting the image onto a CD.
"Proxomitron (this is old now, might look for sommat else?)"
I'm still using Proxomitron too, but, since it's gone unsupported, when I get around to it I'll probably switch over to Privoxy. Just figured I'd mention it in case you hadn't run into this yet.
"Who in their right mind (excluding users) would think of installing software without installing ALL the patches for the OS they are using..."
Not sure, maybe the same person who ends up having to format and reinstall his OS at least once a month? (Not saying poster was in his right mind...)
Seriously though, a note to reddigitaldragon:
If you know you're gonna reinstall and you know what you're gonna put on the system after installing, you really should invest in a copy of Ghost (or DriveImage, but I haven't worked with that, so I can't personally vouch for its functionality). It'll save you several hours each month. Do your install once, install your progs, defrag (for good measure) make a Ghost image, burn it to CD along with ghost.exe and next time the whole process will take you ~10 minutes.
I just recently (last night) discovered syn, an editor that, among other things, can function as a console window. Like I said, I just discovered it and I have barely started trying it out, so I can't tell you yet how well it works. Try it out for yourself - it sounds to me like what you were looking for.
Russ
>I never said I bought from ITMS. I said that if I did, I would have to jump through more hoops than I'd like to put the songs on my non-iPod MP3 player.
I see, sorry, I guess I misread your hypothetical. it makes sense when I read it with the above comment in mind.
>I get my music in MP3 format from allofmp3.com, because it is faster than P2P.
Just went to check it out, is the site down or something? I get no response from the server.
I don't understand how you reconcile "Boycott the RIAA" (your sig at the time of my posting) and buying from ITMS. Doesn't about 90% of the money from your ITMS purchase go to the RIAA?
How about this: a Google partner link to the story - no registration required.
OK, I know I'm late to this party, but hopefully you're still reading reponses.
My evolution has been a bit different than yours (Atari 800/Apple ][ instead of TRS-80, never became an exec), but the net effect is the same: I used to program, and even was considered good, but now I'm barely a dabbler in it and I want to re-learn.
I found a really good tutorial called How to Design Programs. I've looked at/tried a lot of tutorials over the years, and I believe this is one of the best. The language it teaches is Scheme, buit that's almost irrelevent, as it's not getting into the nitty-gritty of the language, just using it as a tool to teach programming and design concepts. I'm going though it right now, and really enjoying it. Most other tutorials on programming I've run into to seem to be more interested in showing little details of their chosen language, and assuming a knowledge (or at least saving for later the lessons on) basic programming concepts.
Anyways, take a look - I hope it works out for you!
" Those "free" programs you speak of were shareware, and users were on thier honor to pay for them eventually if they continued to use it."
Not true. There has always been true freeware for Windows. Back when I used to have more need for it, one of the best sites for freeware was NoNags. Take a look at their listing guidelines to see for yourself whether these are really shareware.
All that said, I haven't tried to use the site in several months, so I don't really know how good the selection is these days - or whether quality is as high as I remember it.
...That Xerox tries to sue this guy to take down the information?
Not sure what law they'd pull out of their hat for the job, especially since this guy is not US based, but this just seems like it's raining on their parade a bit too much for Xerox to not pull out the lawyers.
Neat...too bad it's a fake. Note the URL: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/victories.htm l
If you do a regular search, you'll see that Google returns over 6,000 results for the search terms.
I just downloaded the full installer - it took all of 1 minute 29 seconds. Have you even tried downloading it from the server?
He already has:
I'm disallowed, since I currently work as a salesman. I probably wouldn't wear/display it anyway, since I neither feel I'm enough of a hacker to deserve recognitioon nor feel insecure enough to try to get the recognition from wearing/displaying some "exclusive" logo.
I believe that was meant as a joke - try re-reading with that in mind.
I'm an old time HP calc user (still have my trusty 12C (which is still running on original batteries!) and my 48G) I first fell in love with them back when I was in high school and a friend of the family brought his old (pocket size LED display model, not sure which) HP over and taught me how to use it.
I recently got a Palm OS device I can use, a Treo 300 (I'm Graffiti-challenged - way to sloppy a handwriter to ever train myself to make the symbols consistently enough) and have been looking around for a good RPN calculator for it. So far I'm using RPN, a simple RPN calc released freely under the GPL, but I've also discovered another one that I'm tempted to check out even though it's probably way more than I actually need these days. From the sound of it, if this calc is all it claims to be, it may be exactly what the poster was looking for (if he/she has a Palm device). There are also several other versions for whatever your needs.
I am not associated with Infinity Softwaorks, the developers of this calculator. In fact I haven't even tried the calculator I mentioned, I just happened to have discovered it recently and thought it was relevant.
"The strategies of Chess are pretty well defined, with Grand Masters easily able to say why one move is better than another. With Go, players simply reply that a move "felt right"."
I think you're misinformed. It is true that there are "players" who will respond that a move "felt right", and I am even one of those players who would respond that way in many cases, but I would also respond that way when explaining the reason I made a particular chess move - and I would estimate that my skill level in each game is roughly equivalent - (~1450 ELO for chess, 10 kyu in Go - better than the best go playing programs, IIRC). "Masters" in Go (Pro- level Dan players), or even advanced amateurs (Amateur dans and near-dan Kyu players) can generally explain why a given move is good (or bad) and effectively teach less experienced players both general concepts and specific tactics and strategies. I have several books on Go which do exactly that. If all they had to say was that a move "feels right" they wouldn't be of much use as learning tools.
Spamgourmet is made specifically for the prupose you describe - and IMHO, does it much better.
There. Now you don't need Hotmail at all. Yay!