Not only that, there are versions of dd that don't stop on read errors. These can be used to recover whatever you can, then use PAR files to rebuilt them. dd-rescue is one.
I wonder if you can use PAR files of PAR files to rebuild them?
The basic problem remains - there IS no really long-life archival storage media. CD's are NOT reliable. Put a label on them with the wrong glue and it eats the CD data within a couple of years.
I tried to restore an 18-month old backup from CD a few weeks ago - most of it restored, but one of the CDs had read errors and wouldn't fully restore.
Mag tape loses strength over the years IIRC.
Hard disks are good, but if they aren't revved up periodically they get stiction and presumably the data also loses magnetic strength over time.
Anybody for chipping rock in ones and zeroes?
The other issue is: do we really NEED to keep stuff for generations? Especially since the human race is unlikely to survive this century in its present form - and the future form is unlikely to care what humans did?
I'm quite aware that many places include a mouse or something for the cheap price. That's STILL (shouting intended) intended to obey the MS monopoly contract rules. BananaPC BTW did NOT specify IIRC that they include hardware - they specify that you must PURCHASE hardware to get the cheap price. Did you visit their site? I did.
If you want to compile FREE on Windows in C++, there are several pretty good OSS compilers available - complete with IDE's - for FREE - including gcc.
Well, undoubtedly you're looking at somebody other than the gray market. I'm sure there are legal sellers of Windows in Eastern Europe as well as gray market dealers. I have seen ads from Eastern Europe (they say so in the ads) where you can get Windows for around $50 - even Office can be had very cheaply.
They're worried about imposing their beliefs on another culture?
The point of their exercise is that members of a given culture (their governments) have imposed their beliefs on the people of that culture. It is up to the PEOPLE to decide what the "culture" is - NOT the government.
In any event, there is NO culture worth "preserving" if it cannot "preserve" itself, by definition. (And the Iraqis are proving and preserving daily by shooting US troops.)
These people need to get straight on this or their efforts will be half-hearted and useless.
Are you naive. Some giant corps, yes. Your AVERAGE business probably couldn't survive six months with no income. Any corporation with stock would see its stock plummet to zero value.
> old Z80 64KB system from the mid-80's, came with > BASIC in ROM
Mid-80's?
You mean after the IBM PC was out?
Why?
I worked on TRS-80 Model II's in 1983 and they were obsolete then since the IBM PC was out. (My client couldn't afford to buy IBM PC's since he'd pissed away $50K on a minicomputer which was overkill for his purpose - and the TRS-80's were too small for his purpose.)
Why does that asshole Windows Media Player 9 want to take over ALL the associations on my machine - as if I couldn't POSSIBLY want to run my MP3's with Winamp? The fucking checkboxes are ALL checked and CANNOT BE UNCHECKED.
Nowadays they're so wrapped in plastic you couldn't infect them with a stake dipped in Ebola. They won't do ANYTHING except blow you WITH a rubber on. Simple economics - they do less, you pay more. They've always had the attitude that the quicker you get off, the faster they can get on to the next client. Now they have an excuse to rip you off.
Forget the "porn industry panic" articles in the press the last couple days - they've had that problem before and dealt with it.
The other day Opera dropped Windows 2000 TO THE FLOOR - hard crash. (Actually it probably wasn't Opera but some stupid Java or something from a site.) Opera itself seems to crash more often on 2000 than 98, amazingly.
I've only been using 2000 for the last couple of months. So far it IS far more stable than Windows 98 - on that, you are correct.
I have AT&T Wireless prepaid cellular service. I led it slide for six months and they canceled my account. I re-activated my account (getting a new number) around the end of last year.
So I guess I missed all the porting problems. I was barely aware that they were sold to Cingular. In fact, every time I connect to the service to check my account balance or whatever, it still says "AT&T Wireless" on everything.
Hope this doesn't completely fall apart, as I am depending on that phone and number for my tech support business at the moment.
As an example of how company management is completely clueless, it doesn't get more obvious than this.
No, moron, geeks are not the only people who should use the Net.
Neither are drunk drivers the only people who should be on the road.
The same applies to the Net - if you are contributing to the spam and viruses that are ruining the Net, get the fuck off. This is a public utility and should not be screwed up by morons.
Re:The "Linux for Grandma" idea is flawed
on
GNOME for Grandma
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, right, rocket scientist.
And I suppose they just "used" Windows because it's so 'intuitive"?
Bullshit.
Another Windows troll.
Does Gates pay you guys or do you just have a lot of time on your hands because you're not smart enough - being a mouse monkey - to hold down a REAL tech job?
Another "archival media" that can be destroyed by crumpling it up...
First it was eight-inch floppies that became worthless if you bent them, then it was CDs that become worthless if they get a fingerprint on them, now this.
Anybody with any brains out there that can make an archival media with large storage, high speed, and Superman's invulnerability?
MY point is that ANY disruption - and the disruption in my opinion depends far more on how the corporation does it than on any technical or usability issues - is better than staying on the MS treadmill.
And as for the Mac, while it may indeed be a very good UNIX and suitable for deployment TODAY in corporations, and may even be better than Linux in that regard TODAY, will not evolve as fast Linux in both power and usability and therefore will be a liability to corporations in the future when Linux is superior. And Linux WILL be superior.
In any event, the point is moot. Linux is getting on more desktops than Apple and will continue to do so.
Open Office does indeed have enough capability to displace Microsoft Office. Most of the features of MS Office aren't even used by most users and the ones that do use them probably don't need to.
And again, the "consistent interface problem" is horseshit. If you use one desktop, and you use standard apps, there is little inconsistency. And there is plenty of inconsistency in Windows apps if you look for it. The average corporate user would be completely unaffected by any of this.
The disruption issue is garbage - a red herring. It has nothing whatever to do with Linux usability or any other technical issue. It's a political issue for lame CIOs and Windows trolls. It's "Not Invented Here Syndrome", fear of change, fear of taking responsibility for your actions, nothing more.
You missed my point. If they turn on that firewall by default, a lot of "grandma" home users - the ones the Windows trolls think are only served by Windows - are gonna suddenly get cut off from their email, their ISP, whatever. Panic time, supposedly.
The point the OP was making was that a Linux firewall is a nuisance and a problem for casual users.
Well, now that problem is a problem for Windows users.
You may be right that the built-in firewall is crap - probably are right. I don't use it, I use Kerio. My point was that people who don't use are gonna have to find out how to turn it off if they don't want to use it.
And as recent articles have said, given the state of the Internet today, people without firewalls and antivirus have no business being on it. Were you aware that THIRTY-THREE PERCENT OF THE SPAM comes from home users machines being hijacked by spammers because they have no firewall and no AV?
It's not an "elitist attitude" - it's a fact. People who don't know how to take at least basic precautions shouldn't be on the Net because they are helping screw it up for everyone.
YOUR Windows troll views are equally annoying and far more uninformed.
There IS no stuff that is "standard, user-friendly and just works" - on Windows or anyplace else. If you think so, you have never used or installed SQUAT on Windows. You've never used anything but Microsoft Office, apparently - and even THAT is a pain in the ass frequently if you try to use more than the average user's twenty percent of the features.
The notion that Windows crap "just works" is fucking laughable. "It's not really normal", he says. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
On Linux they wouldn't have had to install even that. Xpdf works fine. The associations are already made. Click on a PDF and read it.
Let me rephrase: casual users don't install significant amounts of software because they don't even know it exists. They may install on occasion. For that, Linux can install dozens of apps with no problem as long as those apps were packaged for that distro. Linux has distros - Windows doesn't (unless you count the tons of stuff that WOULD NOT RUN ON XP or if running on XP WILL NOT RUN ON Win 98 - which the Windows trolls don't take into account when they talk about "install problems".
It's all bullshit. The occasional dependency problem is a problem for Linux - but it's not a problem the average casual user is going to run into. Not enough to override the advantages of using Linux.
Network cards cost $10 - dump the piece of shit and replace it with something that works with Linux.
By the way, when I installed Windows 2000 on my year-old machine, it didn't find anything either. Not being found does not equal not usable. Go look for the fucking drivers. And yes, you have to do that with Windows, too - although usually when you buy hardware, a Windows driver is included so it's slightly easier to find it on a CD than it is on the Net.
Nonetheless, when I installed Windows XP on my machine, I was surprised to discover that the Efficient Systems Enternet 300 DSL client that powers my Windows DSL connection is NOT SUPPORTED on XP - unless you fork over bucks. Fortunately, one can use the built-in PPPoE client in XP to connect to SBC. Did I throw Windows XP in the street (well, slightly, I use 2000 more on my triple-boot machine).
Who is writing custom payroll software? The same consultants writing it for Windows, presumably. By definition, custom mean you pay someone to create or modify something. I'm sure there are plenty of Linux geeks around with payroll experience who can roll one in Linux if someone pays them. Payroll software after all is not really a geek enthusiasm, except maybe for some very odd people, so people don't tend to write that sort of thing "for fun". They will write it for money, however - which is how most accounting software packages got written historically, if you don't know. Someone got a consulting contract for one or more companies, wrote the stuff, then generalized it and starting selling it to others. Open source can do that just as well as anybody else.
Installation? Look, there is plenty of downloaded Windows software that fucks up when you install it. And grandma isn't going to install them either. And "grandma" is bullshit anyway - plenty of "grandmas" can use computers better than you can.
Learn to do things the Linux way - get your software from your distro or from sources that support your distro. Learn to use KPackage, apt-get or whatever, Checkinstall, and KConfigure. Do that and most installations will not be a significant problem.
Look, there are four kinds of users: casual users, power users, office or professional users, and technies. The first one doesn't install hardware or software - they just surf the Web, do some documents, play with some images and some MP3's and some games, send email, etc. Linux can handle this easily. That's "grandma". The power user knows enough and is determined enough to figure out how to make Linux do what he wants it to do. So is the techie. The office user doesn't install hardware or software either - his IT department does that. So his only problem is learning to switch from Windows to Linux - which is an issue of (minimal) training and motivation, not phoney "usability".
The only problem Linux has that is significant is when new hardware needs to be installed that is not directly supported by the kernel and for which there are no drivers. The solution? Don't buy that hardware. Just because WIndows supports more hardware is not reason to jettison Linux - unless you run a business on that particular hardware - which is rare. Users need to understand that you check for software support before you buy hardware - no matter whether it is Windows, Mac or Linux. What do you do if you see hardware you like - but it's designed for the Mac? Dump Windows and buy a Mac? I didn't think so.
All these complaints are red herrings. Linux has its problems - so does Windows. The bottom line is Linux doesn't make you pay through the nose for its problems like Gates does.
And Linux is getting better faster. Windows isn't - it's getting more bloated and more expensive faster. And as long as Gates is in charge, that's the way it's going to be.
So the end user has to understand that and make up their mind whether they want to be a source of the wealth of the world's (second) richest man or whether they want some cheap software that works well enough to do most of the stuff they need to do with a computer.
Linux can be improved - and it is. Next year it will be much better than it is this year - and Longhorn still won't be out.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously - all over the Net!
alt.binaries.models is a good place...
Not only that, there are versions of dd that don't stop on read errors. These can be used to recover whatever you can, then use PAR files to rebuilt them. dd-rescue is one.
I wonder if you can use PAR files of PAR files to rebuild them?
The basic problem remains - there IS no really long-life archival storage media. CD's are NOT reliable. Put a label on them with the wrong glue and it eats the CD data within a couple of years.
I tried to restore an 18-month old backup from CD a few weeks ago - most of it restored, but one of the CDs had read errors and wouldn't fully restore.
Mag tape loses strength over the years IIRC.
Hard disks are good, but if they aren't revved up periodically they get stiction and presumably the data also loses magnetic strength over time.
Anybody for chipping rock in ones and zeroes?
The other issue is: do we really NEED to keep stuff for generations? Especially since the human race is unlikely to survive this century in its present form - and the future form is unlikely to care what humans did?
I'm quite aware that many places include a mouse or something for the cheap price. That's STILL (shouting intended) intended to obey the MS monopoly contract rules. BananaPC BTW did NOT specify IIRC that they include hardware - they specify that you must PURCHASE hardware to get the cheap price. Did you visit their site? I did.
If you want to compile FREE on Windows in C++, there are several pretty good OSS compilers available - complete with IDE's - for FREE - including gcc.
Well, undoubtedly you're looking at somebody other than the gray market. I'm sure there are legal sellers of Windows in Eastern Europe as well as gray market dealers. I have seen ads from Eastern Europe (they say so in the ads) where you can get Windows for around $50 - even Office can be had very cheaply.
They're worried about imposing their beliefs on another culture?
The point of their exercise is that members of a given culture (their governments) have imposed their beliefs on the people of that culture. It is up to the PEOPLE to decide what the "culture" is - NOT the government.
In any event, there is NO culture worth "preserving" if it cannot "preserve" itself, by definition. (And the Iraqis are proving and preserving daily by shooting US troops.)
These people need to get straight on this or their efforts will be half-hearted and useless.
MOST businesses?
Are you naive. Some giant corps, yes. Your AVERAGE business probably couldn't survive six months with no income. Any corporation with stock would see its stock plummet to zero value.
> old Z80 64KB system from the mid-80's, came with
> BASIC in ROM
Mid-80's?
You mean after the IBM PC was out?
Why?
I worked on TRS-80 Model II's in 1983 and they were obsolete then since the IBM PC was out. (My client couldn't afford to buy IBM PC's since he'd pissed away $50K on a minicomputer which was overkill for his purpose - and the TRS-80's were too small for his purpose.)
Windows IS a "bunch of tools and libraries".
Why does that asshole Windows Media Player 9 want to take over ALL the associations on my machine - as if I couldn't POSSIBLY want to run my MP3's with Winamp? The fucking checkboxes are ALL checked and CANNOT BE UNCHECKED.
Fuck Windows. Fuck Microsoft. Fuck Bill Gates.
Have a nice day.
You've never dealt with a hooker, have you?
Nowadays they're so wrapped in plastic you couldn't infect them with a stake dipped in Ebola. They won't do ANYTHING except blow you WITH a rubber on. Simple economics - they do less, you pay more. They've always had the attitude that the quicker you get off, the faster they can get on to the next client. Now they have an excuse to rip you off.
Forget the "porn industry panic" articles in the press the last couple days - they've had that problem before and dealt with it.
The other day Opera dropped Windows 2000 TO THE FLOOR - hard crash. (Actually it probably wasn't Opera but some stupid Java or something from a site.) Opera itself seems to crash more often on 2000 than 98, amazingly.
I've only been using 2000 for the last couple of months. So far it IS far more stable than Windows 98 - on that, you are correct.
But it's not invulnerable.
Yes, and that $85 for XP Home is just $12 down from the list price of $97 - AND you have to buy a piece of "hardware" to get that price.
What "hardware" goes for less than $12? Maybe a mouse? A mouse pad?
Face it - BananaPC is charging you as little as they can while STILL OBEYING MICROSOFT'S MONOPOLY.
You can buy Microsoft grey market products from Eastern Europe for less than this - but the sites tell you not to bother trying to register it.
Wireless ones DO "walk around outside".
And these things are wireless - which means they can be hacked from 300 feet away from your site.
Another product from your standard Geek Moron.
Hack one robot wirelessly, take over the entire building.
Real smart.
I have AT&T Wireless prepaid cellular service. I led it slide for six months and they canceled my account. I re-activated my account (getting a new number) around the end of last year.
So I guess I missed all the porting problems. I was barely aware that they were sold to Cingular. In fact, every time I connect to the service to check my account balance or whatever, it still says "AT&T Wireless" on everything.
Hope this doesn't completely fall apart, as I am depending on that phone and number for my tech support business at the moment.
As an example of how company management is completely clueless, it doesn't get more obvious than this.
Heh, heh, that should work real well on Linux!
Somebody should try running IE on WINE and go there and see what happens.
No, moron, geeks are not the only people who should use the Net.
Neither are drunk drivers the only people who should be on the road.
The same applies to the Net - if you are contributing to the spam and viruses that are ruining the Net, get the fuck off. This is a public utility and should not be screwed up by morons.
And I DO blame Microsoft for this mess as well.
No.
Fucking braindead.
Totally useless.
Idiotic.
Some marketing clown's idea.
A ploy to suck money out of people.
A waste of bandwidth.
Only a Geek Moron could love this.
Yeah, right, rocket scientist.
And I suppose they just "used" Windows because it's so 'intuitive"?
Bullshit.
Another Windows troll.
Does Gates pay you guys or do you just have a lot of time on your hands because you're not smart enough - being a mouse monkey - to hold down a REAL tech job?
And your reference for this remark is what?
Put up or shut up.
Another "archival media" that can be destroyed by crumpling it up...
First it was eight-inch floppies that became worthless if you bent them, then it was CDs that become worthless if they get a fingerprint on them, now this.
Anybody with any brains out there that can make an archival media with large storage, high speed, and Superman's invulnerability?
Geek Morons! Jesus Baron von Christ!
You still don't get it.
MY point is that ANY disruption - and the disruption in my opinion depends far more on how the corporation does it than on any technical or usability issues - is better than staying on the MS treadmill.
And as for the Mac, while it may indeed be a very good UNIX and suitable for deployment TODAY in corporations, and may even be better than Linux in that regard TODAY, will not evolve as fast Linux in both power and usability and therefore will be a liability to corporations in the future when Linux is superior. And Linux WILL be superior.
In any event, the point is moot. Linux is getting on more desktops than Apple and will continue to do so.
Open Office does indeed have enough capability to displace Microsoft Office. Most of the features of MS Office aren't even used by most users and the ones that do use them probably don't need to.
And again, the "consistent interface problem" is horseshit. If you use one desktop, and you use standard apps, there is little inconsistency. And there is plenty of inconsistency in Windows apps if you look for it. The average corporate user would be completely unaffected by any of this.
The disruption issue is garbage - a red herring. It has nothing whatever to do with Linux usability or any other technical issue. It's a political issue for lame CIOs and Windows trolls. It's "Not Invented Here Syndrome", fear of change, fear of taking responsibility for your actions, nothing more.
You missed my point. If they turn on that firewall by default, a lot of "grandma" home users - the ones the Windows trolls think are only served by Windows - are gonna suddenly get cut off from their email, their ISP, whatever. Panic time, supposedly.
The point the OP was making was that a Linux firewall is a nuisance and a problem for casual users.
Well, now that problem is a problem for Windows users.
You may be right that the built-in firewall is crap - probably are right. I don't use it, I use Kerio. My point was that people who don't use are gonna have to find out how to turn it off if they don't want to use it.
And as recent articles have said, given the state of the Internet today, people without firewalls and antivirus have no business being on it. Were you aware that THIRTY-THREE PERCENT OF THE SPAM comes from home users machines being hijacked by spammers because they have no firewall and no AV?
It's not an "elitist attitude" - it's a fact. People who don't know how to take at least basic precautions shouldn't be on the Net because they are helping screw it up for everyone.
YOUR Windows troll views are equally annoying and far more uninformed.
There IS no stuff that is "standard, user-friendly and just works" - on Windows or anyplace else. If you think so, you have never used or installed SQUAT on Windows. You've never used anything but Microsoft Office, apparently - and even THAT is a pain in the ass frequently if you try to use more than the average user's twenty percent of the features.
The notion that Windows crap "just works" is fucking laughable. "It's not really normal", he says. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
So buzz off, troll.
They had to install Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Whoop-de-doo.
On Linux they wouldn't have had to install even that. Xpdf works fine. The associations are already made. Click on a PDF and read it.
Let me rephrase: casual users don't install significant amounts of software because they don't even know it exists. They may install on occasion. For that, Linux can install dozens of apps with no problem as long as those apps were packaged for that distro. Linux has distros - Windows doesn't (unless you count the tons of stuff that WOULD NOT RUN ON XP or if running on XP WILL NOT RUN ON Win 98 - which the Windows trolls don't take into account when they talk about "install problems".
It's all bullshit. The occasional dependency problem is a problem for Linux - but it's not a problem the average casual user is going to run into. Not enough to override the advantages of using Linux.
Network cards cost $10 - dump the piece of shit and replace it with something that works with Linux.
By the way, when I installed Windows 2000 on my year-old machine, it didn't find anything either. Not being found does not equal not usable. Go look for the fucking drivers. And yes, you have to do that with Windows, too - although usually when you buy hardware, a Windows driver is included so it's slightly easier to find it on a CD than it is on the Net.
Nonetheless, when I installed Windows XP on my machine, I was surprised to discover that the Efficient Systems Enternet 300 DSL client that powers my Windows DSL connection is NOT SUPPORTED on XP - unless you fork over bucks. Fortunately, one can use the built-in PPPoE client in XP to connect to SBC. Did I throw Windows XP in the street (well, slightly, I use 2000 more on my triple-boot machine).
Who is writing custom payroll software? The same consultants writing it for Windows, presumably. By definition, custom mean you pay someone to create or modify something. I'm sure there are plenty of Linux geeks around with payroll experience who can roll one in Linux if someone pays them. Payroll software after all is not really a geek enthusiasm, except maybe for some very odd people, so people don't tend to write that sort of thing "for fun". They will write it for money, however - which is how most accounting software packages got written historically, if you don't know. Someone got a consulting contract for one or more companies, wrote the stuff, then generalized it and starting selling it to others. Open source can do that just as well as anybody else.
Installation? Look, there is plenty of downloaded Windows software that fucks up when you install it. And grandma isn't going to install them either. And "grandma" is bullshit anyway - plenty of "grandmas" can use computers better than you can.
Learn to do things the Linux way - get your software from your distro or from sources that support your distro. Learn to use KPackage, apt-get or whatever, Checkinstall, and KConfigure. Do that and most installations will not be a significant problem.
Look, there are four kinds of users: casual users, power users, office or professional users, and technies. The first one doesn't install hardware or software - they just surf the Web, do some documents, play with some images and some MP3's and some games, send email, etc. Linux can handle this easily. That's "grandma". The power user knows enough and is determined enough to figure out how to make Linux do what he wants it to do. So is the techie. The office user doesn't install hardware or software either - his IT department does that. So his only problem is learning to switch from Windows to Linux - which is an issue of (minimal) training and motivation, not phoney "usability".
The only problem Linux has that is significant is when new hardware needs to be installed that is not directly supported by the kernel and for which there are no drivers. The solution? Don't buy that hardware. Just because WIndows supports more hardware is not reason to jettison Linux - unless you run a business on that particular hardware - which is rare. Users need to understand that you check for software support before you buy hardware - no matter whether it is Windows, Mac or Linux. What do you do if you see hardware you like - but it's designed for the Mac? Dump Windows and buy a Mac? I didn't think so.
All these complaints are red herrings. Linux has its problems - so does Windows. The bottom line is Linux doesn't make you pay through the nose for its problems like Gates does.
And Linux is getting better faster. Windows isn't - it's getting more bloated and more expensive faster. And as long as Gates is in charge, that's the way it's going to be.
So the end user has to understand that and make up their mind whether they want to be a source of the wealth of the world's (second) richest man or whether they want some cheap software that works well enough to do most of the stuff they need to do with a computer.
Linux can be improved - and it is. Next year it will be much better than it is this year - and Longhorn still won't be out.