That the free stuff is just as good (if not better) than high-priced diag software.
Allow me to give you some background:
I have done IT work for 4.5 years. I work with Novell, RedHat, all (disgusting) flavours of Windows, BeOS, Sun, SGI, Apple (Mac) and QNX. I support everyone from Joe Grandma to major Universities and Medical Colleges.
I have several CDs worth of useful tools at my disposal, all of them free:
Ad-Aware: I consider this to be my single best resource in the fight against Windows NT (and up) flakery.
www.trendmicro.com does an on-line virus scan. Not perfect, but usually finds the major ones.
Demos of Anti-Trojan. Again, good enough for the closing of trojan ports left open.
AVG Anti-Virus software. Good, free AV software, if Norton isn't available.
Winzip: Obviously a good thing, many many drivers come zipped.
A CD full of the most common NIC drivers from the biggest vendors.
nVidia and ATI drivers. Via drivers
All the latest browsers on another CD.
MemTestx86 (as you have found): Allow me one point further int he favor of it, major memory makers will accept their RAM bad, no questions asked (in my experience) if you tell them it was checked and found bad, via MemTextx86.
SiSoft Sandra, if for nothing else than the CPU-Burn wizard. If the CPU is bad, Sandra will find out.
Emergency Boot disks and cd-rom access disks (sadly, the Win98 boot disk is pretty handy)
A live Linux and live BeOS CD (very handy for recovering data of hosed systems)
And last, but not least, a good Google search. Another thing that has saved my skin time and again is to input exact error messages and see what Google turns up.
This whole cd-wallet has set me back perhaps $20, and does far more than "professional" diag tools can hope to accomplish.
Of course, the moment you start attaching external devices to a laptop, you lose the whole idea of "portable" and you might as well go for a Shuttle XPC instead
if it hasn't already by the time this question is posed, but:
What kind of Real World battery life would you get?
And I agree gaming on a laptop blows goats, squishy keyboard feel, odd layouts and (at least up to this point) iffy graphics cards put them firmly in the MAME, not DOOM3, category.
What's worse is, that under certain circumstances, premeditated murder carries a *maximum* penalty of 2 years in jail (basically for environmental crimes. I studied several cases in detail)
Think about it for a moment. The co-workers were (dead) quiet, I could play all the loud music I wanted and none of my co-workers ever complained.
I could read on the job, sleep on the job (overnight stay was part of the job) and no one cared.
Granted, it was a little cool at the place, but Management realized it was a dead-end job, so they allowed you free reign. We ordered pizzas, had friends over, watched movies, even got paid pretty well!
Only problem with the job was, as I said earlier, it was pretty much dead-end, though if I died on the job, they had full benefits.
and I'll say it again, Ad-Aware (www.lavasoftusa.com) is the only spyware removal program that's worth a damn.
Some of the others that I have seen/tried, are too zealous and end up removing bits that are *required* by proper programs, and end up wrecking things.
Ad-Aware, good as gold. In addition, IIRC they offer a corporate-based version, much like Norton-Antivirus corporate, and that's a slick idea.
You may or may not be aware the Fiero was a direct rip-off of the Fiat X 1/9, a well engineered and fun car (rusting aside, solved in the last model years of the car) which was designed for ralleying.
As usual, American car makers had no idea what they wer doing when they copied the Fiat, with obvious results.
Dead spot on, which is why (in part anyway) I left the job. It's one thing to be offered a few hundred bucks, it's entirely another thing to be offered a Ferrari to look the other way (and yes I was offered one, and no I didn't take it.)
That job paid *extremely* well, not to mention perks.
Pics and all are available by the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) because *each* and *every* report, inspection, writeup, fine, picture and drawing I made or took, has to be kept on file for 30 years. Federal law.
I am now a computer geek. Same excellent pay, better working environment.
The firm I worked for got a call about a cockroach. Big deal right? Well it was an albino and the size of your fuckin' hand!
Now this wans't in some run down dump, this was in some very ritzy high-priced exclusive shops in an historic section of a major city.
So we're out there looking around and the newbie (new trainie) opens a manhole cover, and out comes running *thousands* of huge albino cockroaches! Running to escape from the light, anywhere and everywhere, into the ice-cream shop nearby, the photo-mart near it, all over the place (including up and over the newbie)
Seems a pipe had broken from one of the toilets, and was feeding raw sewage into a runoff designed for normal water only. Roaches had a field day there, and (pardon the pun) did the shit hit the fan when that was found out. *Serious* damage done to the tourist trade after that!
Not surprising, following the proper disposal methods for bio-hazards was always at the top of my "things done way wrong" list.
Even hospitals rarely did it right. Used to inspect Tattoo shops as well, they were pretty good about it, because one bad report and they were out of business, but many other places just assumed their autoclave would take care of it, which it didn't (leaks, temp. fluctuations, etc. would frequently cause an autoclave to fail sterile testing) and few knew any different.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to some of the best short stories ever written, compiled into his "Anthanology"
But wasn't that the plan of SDI back under Reagan?
Because it's not funny.
Actually, Lindows Inc. isn't very funny either.
That the free stuff is just as good (if not better) than high-priced diag software.
Allow me to give you some background:
I have done IT work for 4.5 years. I work with Novell, RedHat, all (disgusting) flavours of Windows, BeOS, Sun, SGI, Apple (Mac) and QNX. I support everyone from Joe Grandma to major Universities and Medical Colleges.
I have several CDs worth of useful tools at my disposal, all of them free:
Ad-Aware: I consider this to be my single best resource in the fight against Windows NT (and up) flakery.
www.trendmicro.com does an on-line virus scan. Not perfect, but usually finds the major ones.
Demos of Anti-Trojan. Again, good enough for the closing of trojan ports left open.
AVG Anti-Virus software. Good, free AV software, if Norton isn't available.
Winzip: Obviously a good thing, many many drivers come zipped.
A CD full of the most common NIC drivers from the biggest vendors.
nVidia and ATI drivers.
Via drivers
All the latest browsers on another CD.
MemTestx86 (as you have found): Allow me one point further int he favor of it, major memory makers will accept their RAM bad, no questions asked (in my experience) if you tell them it was checked and found bad, via MemTextx86.
SiSoft Sandra, if for nothing else than the CPU-Burn wizard. If the CPU is bad, Sandra will find out.
Emergency Boot disks and cd-rom access disks (sadly, the Win98 boot disk is pretty handy)
A live Linux and live BeOS CD (very handy for recovering data of hosed systems)
And last, but not least, a good Google search. Another thing that has saved my skin time and again is to input exact error messages and see what Google turns up.
This whole cd-wallet has set me back perhaps $20, and does far more than "professional" diag tools can hope to accomplish.
In regards to the HTMl disabler, Outlook express 6 has an option to read everything in plain text. Solves the problem yes?
>>...for his warnings about the widespread use of Microsoft products and the serious security flaws that are being discovered.
This is news? I mean seriously, we knew Windows was insecure from the day the first NT server was hacked.
This can't possibly be news to anyone.
Of course, the moment you start attaching external devices to a laptop, you lose the whole idea of "portable" and you might as well go for a Shuttle XPC instead
if it hasn't already by the time this question is posed, but:
What kind of Real World battery life would you get?
And I agree gaming on a laptop blows goats, squishy keyboard feel, odd layouts and (at least up to this point) iffy graphics cards put them firmly in the MAME, not DOOM3, category.
It's obvious from your comments you've never owned a Ferrari, or any other Italian car (I have, and many to boot).
Look-
Don't mention the words "gaping holes" and "plug" on slashdot....or are you new here?
What's worse is, that under certain circumstances, premeditated murder carries a *maximum* penalty of 2 years in jail (basically for environmental crimes. I studied several cases in detail)
Food for thought.
I worked in a morgue. It was a wonderful job
Think about it for a moment. The co-workers were (dead) quiet, I could play all the loud music I wanted and none of my co-workers ever complained.
I could read on the job, sleep on the job (overnight stay was part of the job) and no one cared.
Granted, it was a little cool at the place, but Management realized it was a dead-end job, so they allowed you free reign. We ordered pizzas, had friends over, watched movies, even got paid pretty well!
Only problem with the job was, as I said earlier, it was pretty much dead-end, though if I died on the job, they had full benefits.
Bear in mind, the site is hosted in Germany, so the ref. build is actually the 1st of Feb, not the 2nd of January.
I was off by a few days, but still damned current.
Don't forget us BeOS users! (all 2 of us)
You are wrong.
The definition list for Ad-Aware is dated 02-04-2004, pretty fucking current.
and I'll say it again, Ad-Aware (www.lavasoftusa.com) is the only spyware removal program that's worth a damn.
Some of the others that I have seen/tried, are too zealous and end up removing bits that are *required* by proper programs, and end up wrecking things.
Ad-Aware, good as gold.
In addition, IIRC they offer a corporate-based version, much like Norton-Antivirus corporate, and that's a slick idea.
You may or may not be aware the Fiero was a direct rip-off of the Fiat X 1/9, a well engineered and fun car (rusting aside, solved in the last model years of the car) which was designed for ralleying.
As usual, American car makers had no idea what they wer doing when they copied the Fiat, with obvious results.
Minor nitpick-
It's not pink, it's chartreuse, it's a line from Bloom County.
Dead spot on, which is why (in part anyway) I left the job. It's one thing to be offered a few hundred bucks, it's entirely another thing to be offered a Ferrari to look the other way (and yes I was offered one, and no I didn't take it.)
Seems to me he should have spent a little more time testing his server's bandwidth.
That job paid *extremely* well, not to mention perks.
Pics and all are available by the FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) because *each* and *every* report, inspection, writeup, fine, picture and drawing I made or took, has to be kept on file for 30 years. Federal law.
I am now a computer geek. Same excellent pay, better working environment.
Let me tell you some other happy stories:
The firm I worked for got a call about a cockroach. Big deal right? Well it was an albino and the size of your fuckin' hand!
Now this wans't in some run down dump, this was in some very ritzy high-priced exclusive shops in an historic section of a major city.
So we're out there looking around and the newbie (new trainie) opens a manhole cover, and out comes running *thousands* of huge albino cockroaches! Running to escape from the light, anywhere and everywhere, into the ice-cream shop nearby, the photo-mart near it, all over the place (including up and over the newbie)
Seems a pipe had broken from one of the toilets, and was feeding raw sewage into a runoff designed for normal water only. Roaches had a field day there, and (pardon the pun) did the shit hit the fan when that was found out. *Serious* damage done to the tourist trade after that!
Not surprising, following the proper disposal methods for bio-hazards was always at the top of my "things done way wrong" list.
Even hospitals rarely did it right. Used to inspect Tattoo shops as well, they were pretty good about it, because one bad report and they were out of business, but many other places just assumed their autoclave would take care of it, which it didn't (leaks, temp. fluctuations, etc. would frequently cause an autoclave to fail sterile testing) and few knew any different.
Certified Industrial Hygienist
Frat dorms were to undergo a renovation, a building inspection for potential hazards was required before the city would grant permits.
I used to be an OSHA/EPA-type inspector. I've seen shit that will melt your eyes.
How about inspecting a toxic waste dump, recently uncovered in a marina, left over from the Vietnam era days, drums and drums of Agent Orange.
Asbestos factory plants shut down an abandoned, with asbestos piles higher than most apartment complexes.
Lead reclaimation factories that never should have gotten permits to begin with.
Frat-boy dorm rooms (I had to wear a gas mask in one section, it was so bad)
Public housing projects where aborted fetuses are hidden under stair cases, along with use diapers from the other kids.
You got nothing on what I have seen...