Becaue I want to cram it back in their faces when they attempt to come after me for an "illegal" video playback system.
Ok, but how are they going to know to come after you unless you volunteer the information to them? Linux boxes using ANY of the currently available DVD players do NOT phone home.
On an M$ box, sure, you would need to worry about them spying on you but on a Linux box, that just ain't happening..
But I assure you, if you BUY a commercial Linux DVD playing program for your Linux box, it WILL phone home everytime you use it.
The beauty of Linux is that you do what ever you damn well please and NO ONE inhibits you, spies on you, limits you, owns your soul, or anything else.
It sounds to me like you are stuck in the M$ mindset. Are you new to Linux?
Most of us Linux zealots are M$ defectors because we are SICK AND TIRED of the heavy handed BS, the evil "licenses", the constant money pit, and the never ending battle for control of YOUR property.
My Linux box is 100% under MY control. I do with it as *I* please, when *I* please and however *I* please. No one else controls, limits, inhibits, restricts or manipulates ANYTHING on, in or to do with my Linux box. I watch ANY movie I want, any time I want, by any method I please. If I want to stream a movie to a terminal in my kitchen and bedroom simultainously, then I do it. If I want to hack my player and make it region free, or remove the macrovision, or rip the DVD's to hard drive so I can have a vast library at my fingertips, I damn well do it. And just for the record, I haven't watched a movie any newer than about 1975 in over 20 years and I listen to indie and classical music. So they can take that and stick it..
And if anyone THINKS they can tell me that I can't do these things, if they think they can tell me how I will or will not use my computer, they better bring a friggin SWAT TEAM because I don't bow to the god of Redmond and I don't worship at the alter of the MPAA or RIAA.
I'm militant about my freedom, I make it no secret that I back up my First Ammendment rights with my Second Ammendment rights..
Oh yeah, and $60 will buy you about 800 rounds of hollow point free speech enforcers..
but I want something that the **AA will acknowledge as legal.
Why? Do you work for them? Are you in fear of the movie police bursting in and arresting you for watching a DVD with a $$ program versus watching the same movie on the same computer and the same DVD drive but a FREE program instead??
Why do you have a burning desire to support these terrorists? Yes, the MPAA (and RIAA) is a terrorist organization. Most people here would agree with me on that. Do you have a guilt complex, do you feel bad that they aren't rich enough? Do you feel it's your civic duty to use software that you have to BUY and that phones home and reports your viewing habits to this terrorist organization?
Do you just have too much money and feel "dirty" and feel that you can cleanse yourself by getting rid of that "dirty old money"??
If you say it's because you are watching movies at work, you should be fired. If you are watching movies at home, who's watching you watch movies??
I can't afford it because it's not a life and death matter. I have an extremely tight budget. You see, I don't suck on the public welfare teat like so many others. I'm not on SSI, welfare, food stamps, unemployment, or any other form of assistance. I got a loan to pay for my spinal fusion surgery and I have to pay that loan back. I didn't go the public assistance route for my medical bills. Prior to my surgery I was disabled and in extremely bad shape but I was able do SOME things for myself and made a meager living repairing things, a general fix-it man. Now, I'm in a full torso brace/cast that 100% prevents me from doing anything for myself. I can't put on my socks without a special gadget to help me. I can't bend down and pick up things, I can't lift more than a half pound. I'm so totally immobilized that the simplest of things that you take for granted are not possible for me to do. Getting in and out of bed is a slow and painful procedure. After that I am restricted to sitting in a chair all day with short walks permitted. I feel less capable after surgery than before, before I could do minimal lifting and a little light work, now I can do nothing. I wish I hadn't had the surgery. I only had it because I couldn't live with the pain anymore and because they said I was in extreme danger of having an accident (a fall or car wreck) and shearing my spinal cord in two.
As for feeding the dog, I am buddy-buddy with the owner of a dog kennel and I barter with him, PC work for dog food, they use M$ and have constant problems. I haven't spent a dime on dog food in 4 years and he eats the good stuff.
My dog is actually eating better than I am because I have it in the bag for him to always have the best dog food there is. I, on the other hand am eating the cheapest, generic foods, no meats, because I am trying to minimize the amount of money that I end up having to repay to my family.
As for my existence now, I have family members helping me out financially until I am able to work again, which my doctors tell me will be between 1 and 2 years depending on how well the fusion takes. Trust me, I'll be paying back my family, they'll make sure of it. I'm not getting a free ride, from anyone. I resisted to the very end, my family had offered to help me out several times and I turned them down time and time again until I got to the point that I had no other choice. Yeah, I'm a hard head. A MAJOR hard head..
Believe me, I could be a leech and apply for all the government assistance programs but I refuse to. I would rather do it the way I am now, and pay my own way than leech the system and get it all for free. And on public assistance, no one ever pays back what they take. Never. I've put in my part to social security and I could draw on it if I wanted to but I choose not to.
I'm no leech. I'm very independent minded. But now, I am at the mercy of others. It's not my choice. But it was my choice not to leech the system...
Maybe so but I don't post AC, I have the _balls_ to openly say what I think about M$... Oh, and one other thing, Bill Gates has no lease on MY soul......
I will not use ANY products that have M$ embedded or otherwise loaded into them. I use OLD equipment and OLD cars to be certain of this. My car is 30 years old (yes, it still runs great and looks excellent) it has SEVEN analog computers in it. I can fix everything in that car myself. EVERYTHING.
I just had back surgery last month and I was TERRIFIED when they rolled me into the O.R. and I lay there looking around at all the M$ screens, I even heard some of them making that XP error sound too. The last thought that went through my head as they put me under was "Dear God, my very life is in the hands of these friggin M$ machines!" I still have nightmares of those moments in my life..
I will NOT buy or use a cell phone or computer or anything else that runs any variation of ANY M$ products.
I totally and absolutely boycott M$, to my dying breath.
"From Hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"
I would like to have some of the auto-cleaning robots, like the roomba and the Robomaid
to help me out around the house. It's almost impossible for me to do housework. Having a large dog makes housework even harder, what with the hair problem. I can not sweep, vacuum, mop, etc..
I think they should classify these devices as assistance devices for disabled/handicapped people because I can't afford them as I'm sure many other disabled/handicapped are on very tight budgets like myself. It would be nice to get them covered like scooters and wheelchairs are..
Oh and one thing I forgot to mention. I am anti big business. I despise global corporations with a passion. They are destroyers, they bring nothing but misery to the many and nirvana and untold riches to the very few elite at the very top. Everyone else suffers. Big business is bad for everyone, bad for the economy, bad for people, bad for the environment, bad for planet earth.
No, I'm not a left winger. No, I'm not a right winger. No, I'm not an anarchist.
I'm pro "little guy". I'm pro Earth. I'm pro small business. I'm pro environment. Big business is in direct conflict with the existence of all the things I believe in.
Commercials suck the weak minded into the spiral that feeds the global machinery that crushes everything under it.
They will not reach my "buy button" I despise commercials. They are nothing less than constant brainwashing. The more they hammer me with BS commercials, the more I am turned off to that product. Most commercials are so offensive and annoying that I only have to see it ONCE to be forever turned off to the product.
I know what I need. I go to the store and buy only the things I MUST have. I do not buy extra things, I don't "browse" or "shop", I buy.
I can't hit the SHUT UP button on the remote fast enough when a commercial comes on.
I wish the U$$A had commercial free TV like the UK does, or at least did have at one time. I would pay for commercial free TV.
Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000 Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million Percentage of survey participants (1993) who said that TV commercials aimed at children make them too materialistic: 92 Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1 Total spending by 100 leading TV advertisers in 1993: $15 billion
Oh and btw, here's an oldie I've been hanging onto for some years now. I don't really know the age of this thing, I bought it at a flea market about 15 years ago and it's in magnificent condition..
It's hard to say, the glory days are over now. Dubya has sent all the good jobs overseas.
Still, it's a GOOD thing to know about electronics. And it's fun too. Here's a great site to get kids started, http://scitoys.com/ and http://www.how stuffworks.com/
And of course here's how a kid can build his own radio from stuff laying around the house.. http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/ radio.htm l#crystal
When I was 5 my dad helped me build a crystal radio from scratch. we wrapped copper wire around a TP roll, got a germanium diode, a copper strip, a 2,000ohm earphone and a board. We wrapped the wire around the TP roll and shellaced it. We screwed the copper strip to the board with the other parts, wired it all up and I was listening to radio without batteries. I thought that was neater than hell (in 1966) and it really inspired me to experimenting. When I was six, a kid gave me a transistor radio he dropped, it ripped the speaker, earphone jack and battery wires loose from the board and he considered it trash. I took it home, locked myself in my dads workshop and spent a while studying the schematic that was glued to the back cover. I got my dads soldering iron and fixed it. It worked. But I hid it in a cigar box because I was afraid my dad would kick my ass for using his tools without asking. My dad found the radio and I had to tell him what I did. He didn't beat me, he gave me all of his old TV and Radio repair tools to play with. That pretty much set it in stone for me from that point..
I KNOW they are all bogus and just ignore them, but I'm worried that friends or family will fall to them. I have a number of elderly family members that surf and no matter how hard you try to explain things to them, they just don't get it.
Some of these things look very legit to the untrained eye and some of them are pretty frightening, such as warnings that your account has been abused and that you need to log in to update your security profile or some such nonsense.
I finally got it through to my elderly aunt to CALL ME FIRST before clicking on anything that comes in email telling her to click or log in or whatever. She still wants to click everything that comes in, I guess she's just goofy in the head.
Sad thing is, there are so many people out there that don't have someone they can call about this stuff and don't know what to do when they get one of these things.
I've tracked a LOT of these ebay scams to Korea. Dubya was right, North Korea is a threat. Last time I checked, I've never seen a phishing attack from Iraq.. We should have attacked North Korea instead. Hell, let's just nuke them and stop this nonsense...
Well, the whole point of the exercise was to install 9.1 on the 30g and use the entire 30g for the OS. The way I did it allowed me to wipe the old drive totally out and start over with it fresh and 100% dedicated to the OS and nothing else.
hda is strictly for the OS and hdb is strictly for/home.. I saw no other way to accomplish this task in as few steps as this method took.
The other thing that was nice about using DSL, I just had to mount the partitions, they were already full R/W without playing the permission games you normally have to play with standard Knoppix 3.6
DSL was really a whole lot easier, oh so easy but oh that scary, scary CLI.....
A friend brought me his machine to upgrade. A Frys cheapo Linux special, originally it came with a 30g, 128m ram and Thiz Linux. I Thized the disc straight into the trash and installed Suse 9.0 on it for him when he first got it.
Well, as time went on he realized that his system needed upgrading. So I sent him to the store and he brought back another 128m ram, a 120g drive and Suse 9.1 Pro.
The plan was to have the old doggy 30g as his boot/OS/work drive (hda) and his new 120g as/home (hdb)....
Well, booting up 9.1 does not come up and say "Hey, I see you have data on your drive already and a new blank drive. Would you like to move it around in anyway before we procede?"
No, Suse just suggests that you wipe everything out and start over. Even if you tell it you want to do an upgrade, it has NO PROVISION what-so-ever to allow you to format the new drive then move your old/home from hda to hdb then reformat hda and partition it up in a useful way.
Ok, so in light of this, I took Damn Small Linux 0.8.2 and booted up. Opened a root terminal, fdisked hdb, formated it for ext3 then moved all of his old/home data from hda to hdb.
It copied EVERYTHING. Hidden files, configurations, email, cookies, bookmarks, music, photos, the whole works.
When it was done I booted into Suse 9.1 pro, did a NEW INSTALLATION and wiped hda clean, installed the OS on it and told it that/home is on hdb1.
I created the same user and password as the old system so Suse looked at the/home on the new 120g drive and asked me if I wanted to change the permissions and ownership over. I said yes.
The install proceded normally to completion. When it was finished and I rebooted the system, it was identical to the way it was brought to me except that he now has a 120g/home directory instead of the 10gigs he had before.
Damn Small Linux is the very best tool a tech can carry with him. I keep a copies on biz cards in all of my tool boxes and in each of my vehicles. I don't leave home without it.
I also carry standard Knoppix in case I run into a case where I need k3b on the ailing machine. I have several other versions of Knoppix I keep handy for various network jobs, like knoppix-std and a few other network related Knoppix knock offs..
(recovering from spinal fusion surgery) I would love to have one of these. Walking is painful and difficult and I can only walk short distances before I have to stop and let the pain subside. I really could use assistance getting around. I can't walk my dog, shop, or much of anything else without a *lot* of pain. But, I despise those little electric carts. It's personally humiliating and embarrassing to me to have to use them. But I can't walk around super wally world, no way. One of these, if I could afford one, would be much better.
My only real fear would be taking a spill and blowing out my $100,000 titanium hardware store.
And I would be concerned about older folks, like those in their 70's and up dumping out and breaking some bones. These things COULD be dangerous. Just ask DuMbya.....
Sure, why not? We've got GM pets, why not GM people? I have a GM dog. He has been bred to keep the desirable qualities and to eradicate the undesirable features. What's so bad about that?
I would love to be stronger, healthier, live longer, look better, be smarter, etc.. And I can't imagine a GM kid growing up like that then complaing, "Damn, I hate my parents, I'm too good looking, I live too long, I'm too healthy, I,m too strong, I'm too smart. Damn, life is no fair!"
If I had the chance to have children that could live longer, healthier and better lives, I would be 100% for that.
I just spent a few days in Houston Memorial Herman Hospital where they have a sort of interesting setup. The old TV's are gone, they have flat screens on a boom that you can pull down to your face and watch TV on, surf the net, etc.. My complaint with it was that it's credit card driven, you get about 10 channels for free but they are all bullcrap channels, women's talk shows, soaps, "The Aquarium Channel" and other useless nonsense. If you want to watch anything else you have to swipe your credit card in a slot on the side to activate the half way decent channels or get on the net. The proxy is heavily censored/nannied and you can't do much more than go to disney.com and other 4 year old level crap. Any site with naughty words are off limits.
Not having a credit card, I was screwed until they caused me some extreme pain, I filed a complaint and they kissed my ass for the rest of my stay which included turning on all the channels.. (not worth the pain though!)
Anyway, the thing was crashing every few hours, it would boot up with a Windows 2000 start up screen then go through a very lengthy new hardware detection process, rebooting numerous times as it tried to detect and install all the goodies. It is a touch screen and the picture was a little better than poor and just under acceptable. You can go back and forth between the net and TV by touching the screen. Typing on it and filling in forms was a pain. There was a power, coax and an ethernet cable from the wall into the boom. I would be willing to bet that this device is insanely expensive. Considering though that they charged me about $100,000 for everything, I would think they may have put a dent in the bill for this system.
At first glance, it looked neat. After serious scrutiny, it's buggy and low quality. But most people laying in bed, in pain could care less.
They'll just hack dumb American DSL and cable subscribers and setup their porn there. Much safer, let a dumb American take the fall instead of one of their own.
Suse 9.1 pro. KDE 3.3 And plenty of disk space. When I install, I select ALL packages. ALL of them. Then I install apt-get and install even more crap.
I do not use Gnome as my GUI but hey, there are a lot of Gnome apps out there and some of them I find handy and can still run them from KDE. I don't care if it's QT or GTK, if it does what I need, I use it. Really. And so what about trolltech license? What are they gonna do, send some ninjas to shoot me with a blow dart gun in the night because I don't like their license?
Whoopy-doo.... It's there, use it if you need it. And a few times, I dicked up KDE so bad that I had to boot into gnome for a little while to repair KDE, rather than wipe the disk and start over. I haven't reformatted, wiped or lost my home directory in two years, despite numerous upgrades, crashes, and constant fiddling. I've had to fall back on Gnome a few times to pull my KDE bacon out of the fire so I say leave it in. What's the problem with the size of hard drives these days and DL DVD's ???
Slashdot Mirror
Becaue I want to cram it back in their faces when they attempt to come after me for an "illegal" video playback system.
Ok, but how are they going to know to come after you unless you volunteer the information to them?
Linux boxes using ANY of the currently available DVD players do NOT phone home.
On an M$ box, sure, you would need to worry about them spying on you but on a Linux box, that just ain't happening..
But I assure you, if you BUY a commercial Linux DVD playing program for your Linux box, it WILL phone home everytime you use it.
The beauty of Linux is that you do what ever you damn well please and NO ONE inhibits you, spies on you, limits you, owns your soul, or anything else.
It sounds to me like you are stuck in the M$ mindset. Are you new to Linux?
Most of us Linux zealots are M$ defectors because we are SICK AND TIRED of the heavy handed BS, the evil "licenses", the constant money pit, and the never ending battle for control of YOUR property.
My Linux box is 100% under MY control. I do with it as *I* please, when *I* please and however *I* please. No one else controls, limits, inhibits, restricts or manipulates ANYTHING on, in or to do with my Linux box. I watch ANY movie I want, any time I want, by any method I please.
If I want to stream a movie to a terminal in my kitchen and bedroom simultainously, then I do it. If I want to hack my player and make it region free, or remove the macrovision, or rip the DVD's to hard drive so I can have a vast library at my fingertips, I damn well do it.
And just for the record, I haven't watched a movie any newer than about 1975 in over 20 years and I listen to indie and classical music. So they can take that and stick it..
And if anyone THINKS they can tell me that I can't do these things, if they think they can tell me how I will or will not use my computer, they better bring a friggin SWAT TEAM because I don't bow to the god of Redmond and I don't worship at the alter of the MPAA or RIAA.
I'm militant about my freedom, I make it no secret that I back up my First Ammendment rights with my Second Ammendment rights..
Oh yeah, and $60 will buy you about 800 rounds of hollow point free speech enforcers..
but I want something that the **AA will acknowledge as legal.
Why? Do you work for them? Are you in fear of the movie police bursting in and arresting you for watching a DVD with a $$ program versus watching the same movie on the same computer and the same DVD drive but a FREE program instead??
Why do you have a burning desire to support these terrorists? Yes, the MPAA (and RIAA) is a terrorist organization. Most people here would agree with me on that. Do you have a guilt complex, do you feel bad that they aren't rich enough?
Do you feel it's your civic duty to use software that you have to BUY and that phones home and reports your viewing habits to this terrorist organization?
Do you just have too much money and feel "dirty" and feel that you can cleanse yourself by getting rid of that "dirty old money"??
If you say it's because you are watching movies at work, you should be fired. If you are watching movies at home, who's watching you watch movies??
Really...
Mplayer...
Totally free. Totally open source. Works great.
Plays everything I stick in it..
I can't afford it because it's not a life and death matter. I have an extremely tight budget.
You see, I don't suck on the public welfare teat like so many others.
I'm not on SSI, welfare, food stamps, unemployment, or any other form of assistance.
I got a loan to pay for my spinal fusion surgery and I have to pay that loan back. I didn't go the public assistance route for my medical bills.
Prior to my surgery I was disabled and in extremely bad shape but I was able do SOME things for myself and made a meager living repairing things, a general fix-it man.
Now, I'm in a full torso brace/cast that 100% prevents me from doing anything for myself. I can't put on my socks without a special gadget to help me. I can't bend down and pick up things, I can't lift more than a half pound. I'm so totally immobilized that the simplest of things that you take for granted are not possible for me to do. Getting in and out of bed is a slow and painful procedure. After that I am restricted to sitting in a chair all day with short walks permitted. I feel less capable after surgery than before, before I could do minimal lifting and a little light work, now I can do nothing.
I wish I hadn't had the surgery. I only had it because I couldn't live with the pain anymore and because they said I was in extreme danger of having an accident (a fall or car wreck) and shearing my spinal cord in two.
As for feeding the dog, I am buddy-buddy with the owner of a dog kennel and I barter with him, PC work for dog food, they use M$ and have constant problems. I haven't spent a dime on dog food in 4 years and he eats the good stuff.
My dog is actually eating better than I am because I have it in the bag for him to always have the best dog food there is.
I, on the other hand am eating the cheapest, generic foods, no meats, because I am trying to minimize the amount of money that I end up having to repay to my family.
As for my existence now, I have family members helping me out financially until I am able to work again, which my doctors tell me will be between 1 and 2 years depending on how well the fusion takes. Trust me, I'll be paying back my family, they'll make sure of it. I'm not getting a free ride, from anyone. I resisted to the very end, my family had offered to help me out several times and I turned them down time and time again until I got to the point that I had no other choice. Yeah, I'm a hard head. A MAJOR hard head..
Believe me, I could be a leech and apply for all the government assistance programs but I refuse to. I would rather do it the way I am now, and pay my own way than leech the system and get it all for free. And on public assistance, no one ever pays back what they take. Never.
I've put in my part to social security and I could draw on it if I wanted to but I choose not to.
I'm no leech. I'm very independent minded. But now, I am at the mercy of others. It's not my choice. But it was my choice not to leech the system...
Heh! Any knoppix distro opens up any M$ box.
Maybe so but I don't post AC, I have the _balls_ to openly say what I think about M$...
Oh, and one other thing, Bill Gates has no lease on MY soul......
Begone troll. I only want back what I PAID IN..
I guess you're too ignorant to understand how the system works...
You should be modded -5, stupid ass
I will not use ANY products that have M$ embedded or otherwise loaded into them.
I use OLD equipment and OLD cars to be certain of this. My car is 30 years old (yes, it still runs great and looks excellent) it has SEVEN analog computers in it. I can fix everything in that car myself. EVERYTHING.
I just had back surgery last month and I was TERRIFIED when they rolled me into the O.R. and I lay there looking around at all the M$ screens, I even heard some of them making that XP error sound too. The last thought that went through my head as they put me under was "Dear God, my very life is in the hands of these friggin M$ machines!" I still have nightmares of those moments in my life..
I will NOT buy or use a cell phone or computer or anything else that runs any variation of ANY M$ products.
I totally and absolutely boycott M$, to my dying breath.
"From Hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee!"
Wow. You're a real sensitive guy.
I bet you impress all your friends with your shining personality.
I bet you have chicks standing in line waiting to bask in your presence.
I would like to have some of the auto-cleaning robots, like the roomba
and the Robomaid
to help me out around the house. It's almost impossible for me to do housework. Having a large dog makes housework even harder, what with the hair problem. I can not sweep, vacuum, mop, etc..
I think they should classify these devices as assistance devices for disabled/handicapped people because I can't afford them as I'm sure many other disabled/handicapped are on very tight budgets like myself. It would be nice to get them covered like scooters and wheelchairs are..
I won't be holding my breath though..
Oh and one thing I forgot to mention.
I am anti big business. I despise global corporations with a passion. They are destroyers, they bring nothing but misery to the many and nirvana and untold riches to the very few elite at the very top. Everyone else suffers. Big business is bad for everyone, bad for the economy, bad for people, bad for the environment, bad for planet earth.
No, I'm not a left winger. No, I'm not a right winger. No, I'm not an anarchist.
I'm pro "little guy". I'm pro Earth. I'm pro small business. I'm pro environment.
Big business is in direct conflict with the existence of all the things I believe in.
Commercials suck the weak minded into the spiral that feeds the global machinery that crushes everything under it.
They will not reach my "buy button"
t h.html
I despise commercials. They are nothing less than constant brainwashing. The more they hammer me with BS commercials, the more I am turned off to that product. Most commercials are so offensive and annoying that I only have to see it ONCE to be forever turned off to the product.
I know what I need. I go to the store and buy only the things I MUST have. I do not buy extra things, I don't "browse" or "shop", I buy.
I can't hit the SHUT UP button on the remote fast enough when a commercial comes on.
I wish the U$$A had commercial free TV like the UK does, or at least did have at one time.
I would pay for commercial free TV.
-
http://www.csun.edu/~vceed002/health/docs/tv&heal
Number of 30-second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million
Percentage of survey participants (1993) who said that TV commercials
aimed at children make them too materialistic: 92
Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1
Total spending by 100 leading TV advertisers in 1993: $15 billion
Oh and btw, here's an oldie I've been hanging onto for some years now. I don't really know the age of this thing, I bought it at a flea market about 15 years ago and it's in magnificent condition..
http://www.systemrecycler.com/pocketradio/
It's hard to say, the glory days are over now. Dubya has sent all the good jobs overseas.
w stuffworks.com/
/ radio.htm l#crystal
Still, it's a GOOD thing to know about electronics. And it's fun too.
Here's a great site to get kids started,
http://scitoys.com/
and
http://www.ho
And of course here's how a kid can build his own radio from stuff laying around the house..
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio
When I was 5 my dad helped me build a crystal radio from scratch.
we wrapped copper wire around a TP roll, got a germanium diode, a copper strip, a 2,000ohm earphone and a board.
We wrapped the wire around the TP roll and shellaced it. We screwed the copper strip to the board with the other parts, wired it all up and I was listening to radio without batteries. I thought that was neater than hell (in 1966) and it really inspired me to experimenting.
When I was six, a kid gave me a transistor radio he dropped, it ripped the speaker, earphone jack and battery wires loose from the board and he considered it trash. I took it home, locked myself in my dads workshop and spent a while studying the schematic that was glued to the back cover. I got my dads soldering iron and fixed it. It worked. But I hid it in a cigar box because I was afraid my dad would kick my ass for using his tools without asking. My dad found the radio and I had to tell him what I did. He didn't beat me, he gave me all of his old TV and Radio repair tools to play with. That pretty much set it in stone for me from that point..
I KNOW they are all bogus and just ignore them, but I'm worried that friends or family will fall to them. I have a number of elderly family members that surf and no matter how hard you try to explain things to them, they just don't get it.
Some of these things look very legit to the untrained eye and some of them are pretty frightening, such as warnings that your account has been abused and that you need to log in to update your security profile or some such nonsense.
I finally got it through to my elderly aunt to CALL ME FIRST before clicking on anything that comes in email telling her to click or log in or whatever. She still wants to click everything that comes in, I guess she's just goofy in the head.
Sad thing is, there are so many people out there that don't have someone they can call about this stuff and don't know what to do when they get one of these things.
I've tracked a LOT of these ebay scams to Korea.
Dubya was right, North Korea is a threat.
Last time I checked, I've never seen a phishing attack from Iraq.. We should have attacked North Korea instead. Hell, let's just nuke them and stop this nonsense...
Well, the whole point of the exercise was to install 9.1 on the 30g and use the entire 30g for the OS. The way I did it allowed me to wipe the old drive totally out and start over with it fresh and 100% dedicated to the OS and nothing else.
/home.. I saw no other way to accomplish this task in as few steps as this method took.
hda is strictly for the OS and hdb is strictly for
The other thing that was nice about using DSL, I just had to mount the partitions, they were already full R/W without playing the permission games you normally have to play with standard Knoppix 3.6
DSL was really a whole lot easier, oh so easy but oh that scary, scary CLI.....
A friend brought me his machine to upgrade.
/home (hdb)....
/home from hda to hdb then reformat hda and partition it up in a useful way.
/home data from hda to hdb.
/home is on hdb1.
/home on the new 120g drive and asked me if I wanted to change the permissions and ownership over. I said yes.
/home directory instead of the 10gigs he had before.
A Frys cheapo Linux special, originally it came with a 30g, 128m ram and Thiz Linux. I Thized the disc straight into the trash and installed Suse 9.0 on it for him when he first got it.
Well, as time went on he realized that his system needed upgrading. So I sent him to the store and he brought back another 128m ram, a 120g drive and Suse 9.1 Pro.
The plan was to have the old doggy 30g as his boot/OS/work drive (hda) and his new 120g as
Well, booting up 9.1 does not come up and say
"Hey, I see you have data on your drive already and a new blank drive. Would you like to move it around in anyway before we procede?"
No, Suse just suggests that you wipe everything out and start over. Even if you tell it you want to do an upgrade, it has NO PROVISION what-so-ever to allow you to format the new drive then move your old
Ok, so in light of this, I took Damn Small Linux 0.8.2
and booted up. Opened a root terminal, fdisked hdb, formated it for ext3 then moved all of his old
It copied EVERYTHING. Hidden files, configurations, email, cookies, bookmarks, music, photos, the whole works.
When it was done I booted into Suse 9.1 pro, did a NEW INSTALLATION and wiped hda clean, installed the OS on it and told it that
I created the same user and password as the old system so Suse looked at the
The install proceded normally to completion.
When it was finished and I rebooted the system, it was identical to the way it was brought to me except that he now has a 120g
Damn Small Linux is the very best tool a tech can carry with him. I keep a copies on biz cards in all of my tool boxes and in each of my vehicles.
I don't leave home without it.
I also carry standard Knoppix in case I run into a case where I need k3b on the ailing machine.
I have several other versions of Knoppix I keep handy for various network jobs, like knoppix-std
and a few other network related Knoppix knock offs..
(recovering from spinal fusion surgery) I would love to have one of these. Walking is painful and difficult and I can only walk short distances before I have to stop and let the pain subside. I really could use assistance getting around.
I can't walk my dog, shop, or much of anything else without a *lot* of pain.
But, I despise those little electric carts. It's personally humiliating and embarrassing to me to have to use them.
But I can't walk around super wally world, no way. One of these, if I could afford one, would be much better.
My only real fear would be taking a spill and blowing out my $100,000 titanium hardware store.
And I would be concerned about older folks, like those in their 70's and up dumping out and breaking some bones. These things COULD be dangerous. Just ask DuMbya.....
Well, let's have some GM people...
Sure, why not?
We've got GM pets, why not GM people?
I have a GM dog. He has been bred to keep the desirable qualities and to eradicate the undesirable features. What's so bad about that?
I would love to be stronger, healthier, live longer, look better, be smarter, etc.. And I can't imagine a GM kid growing up like that then complaing, "Damn, I hate my parents, I'm too good looking, I live too long, I'm too healthy, I,m too strong, I'm too smart. Damn, life is no fair!"
If I had the chance to have children that could live longer, healthier and better lives, I would be 100% for that.
I just spent a few days in Houston Memorial Herman Hospital where they have a sort of interesting setup.
h _hostech.html
The old TV's are gone, they have flat screens on a boom that you can pull down to your face and watch TV on, surf the net, etc..
My complaint with it was that it's credit card driven, you get about 10 channels for free but they are all bullcrap channels, women's talk shows, soaps, "The Aquarium Channel" and other useless nonsense.
If you want to watch anything else you have to swipe your credit card in a slot on the side to activate the half way decent channels or get on the net. The proxy is heavily censored/nannied and you can't do much more than go to disney.com and other 4 year old level crap. Any site with naughty words are off limits.
Not having a credit card, I was screwed until they caused me some extreme pain, I filed a complaint and they kissed my ass for the rest of my stay which included turning on all the channels.. (not worth the pain though!)
Anyway, the thing was crashing every few hours, it would boot up with a Windows 2000 start up screen then go through a very lengthy new hardware detection process, rebooting numerous times as it tried to detect and install all the goodies. It is a touch screen and the picture was a little better than poor and just under acceptable. You can go back and forth between the net and TV by touching the screen. Typing on it and filling in forms was a pain. There was a power, coax and an ethernet cable from the wall into the boom. I would be willing to bet that this device is insanely expensive. Considering though that they charged me about $100,000 for everything, I would think they may have put a dent in the bill for this system.
At first glance, it looked neat. After serious scrutiny, it's buggy and low quality. But most people laying in bed, in pain could care less.
Here's a link to a story all about the system.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/technology/020104_tec
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/11/02 39205&tid=153
The cure? Suse Linux 9.1 Pro and Gaim..
Zane? Zane? Are you out there?
Are you through with my dish yet? I need it back, I have to catch the Sopranos on rerun tonight!
Zane? Zane!!!!!
They'll just hack dumb American DSL and cable subscribers and setup their porn there. Much safer, let a dumb American take the fall instead of one of their own.
Suse 9.1 pro. KDE 3.3 And plenty of disk space.
.02 cents..
When I install, I select ALL packages. ALL of them.
Then I install apt-get and install even more crap.
I do not use Gnome as my GUI but hey, there are a lot of Gnome apps out there and some of them I find handy and can still run them from KDE. I don't care if it's QT or GTK, if it does what I need, I use it. Really. And so what about trolltech license? What are they gonna do, send some ninjas to shoot me with a blow dart gun in the night because I don't like their license?
Whoopy-doo.... It's there, use it if you need it. And a few times, I dicked up KDE so bad that I had to boot into gnome for a little while to repair KDE, rather than wipe the disk and start over. I haven't reformatted, wiped or lost my home directory in two years, despite numerous upgrades, crashes, and constant fiddling. I've had to fall back on Gnome a few times to pull my KDE bacon out of the fire so I say leave it in. What's the problem with the size of hard drives these days and DL DVD's ???
Just my