Like the original poster, I want to add web access this time. I've been playing around with an old laptop w/VGA running to the TV, but it's too slow for any HD content... I'm leaning towards a slim HTPC. I realized that those slim computer cases are about the same size as the VCR and other classic stereo components.
For the first time in years (i.e. since I was a teenager pirating computer games from 3.5 inch floppy disks), I got malware on my PC last week. PC Total Defender 2010, I think it called itself.
I couldn't figure out how I got caught. I have the standard firewall and antivirus installed, plus SpyBot's TeaTimer tool. And I tend to browse safe sites, anything questionable is done in a virtual machine.
Anyway, it turns out that my Adobe Reader was somewhat out of date, and I had half a dozen versions of JVM installed. I suspected one of these was at fault.
I feel sorry for non-geek computer users. It really is tough to tell what is safe software and what isn't.
Personally, I would check sourceforge.net first for an open source equivalent. I'm not an open source zealot, but OSS tends to be malware free, and the bonus is that I can freely give a copy to other people. When that fails nonags.com is where I go. They test for naggy shareware, and I think malware and viruses.
Outside of that? Who knows. I trust my gut based on the website, or I run it in a virtual machine! But other people just don't have that option. Even using Google for the software product + "review" will get you fake affiliate reviews.
If they're going to redesign the PSU and put it together again, maybe it's time to drop 12V. What components still require 12V other than optical drives, 3.5inch HDDs, and high end video cards? Those are all pretty much optional in servers like FB's.
Cost. The battery pack that will give the Chevy Volt a 40 mile range costs thousands of dollars. GM will likely lose money on the first few years of Volts produced and sold. At $40K (or whatever a Volt is scheduled to cost), it's way out of the price range of a lot of people who just want a basic car.
I was going to suggest UltraVNC Single Click also.
To clarify a bit, it's not the same as regular VNC. You don't need to install anything, just click on the.exe.
Also, it works by creating an outbound TCP connection. So, the remote computer support has to have port forwarding setup, but the person sharing doesn't need to do anything with their router (assuming a standard SOHO router with NAT).
UltraVNC does work with Vista, but I can't comment on Single Click paired with Vista.
I think that recent NVidia drivers all support custom screen resolutions. I would guess that ATI drives do as well. I had to do this once when a customer had an early widescreen LCD whose resolution didn't match any VESA standard, at least, not a common one.
Someone a few posts lower linked to a blog with more info. It says "Mr Lewis calculates a zero-till rig will put 1100 kilograms of air through the tractor engine to work a hectare."
I still don't see how this works, but I'm sure enough people will test it eventually.
I thought Apple dictated unlimited data plans (and visual voicemail) in exchange for the exclusivity agreement with AT&T?
In Canada, it took over a year for Apple and Rogers to agree to terms. The rumored sticking point was again, the data plan. When the iPhone came here, the data plan was a fraction of the cost of existing data plans - even though, it's not unlimited.
I actually browsed the article... it refers to static IP's in ranges that have no "history" on the Internet. I.e. it's not zombie'd home PC's on ADSL or Cable from dynamic IP address ranges.
I'm not sure I understand it, though, wouldn't those be easy to track down to real people?
So is email... but my banks won't do that either.
on
Banking Via Twitter?
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· Score: 1
Maybe banks should figure out a way to send me these kinds of updates by email before trying to Twitter them to me!
There are only 100X more email users out there than Twitter users...
(Yeah, I know there are security issues w/email - the same ones with Twitter)
Stripping HDMI cables out of the package has nothing to do with the console maker's desire to push HD vs SD. MS and Sony dropped the price of their consoles by $50-100, and to help do that, trimming down on the included cables helps.
More importantly, retailers like Best Buy are much happier when they can sell an overpriced $30 HDMI cable to more people - and MS and Sony need their retailers to be happy. It's possible that retailers will make more profit by selling a $30 HDMI cable than selling a $300 console. It's been this way with printers and USB cables for years.
Of course, more and more people are learning that cables can be much cheaper online...
I actually had this exact idea a few years back. I went as far as fiddling with customizing Knoppix. But then I got my first laptop - no Wifi support from ANY LiveCD (at the time). Even the laptop that I'm on now won't get wireless support out of the box with Knoppix (I haven't tried any other LiveCD).
Printer drivers (for receipts) would have been a pain too - I figured on PDFs to Flash drives for this. Never mind the huge hassle of rebooting to do a simple transaction.
I'm all for two factor authentication that works -- how come PayPal.com will send me a single-use, time-limited secondary password by SMS for free (in Canada no less)! It'll be 10 years before a Canadian bank does this...
I have a few system support contracts for some small businesses in town - in person, but a lot of small stuff is done remotely, often after hours.
Honestly, I'm surprised at the amount of trust people have in me, or any other outsourced provider. Basically, I live and die on my reputation... it's funny, I never would have predicted that 10 years ago.
Anyway, if the shoe was on the other foot, I would do the following (this is also my fallback offer if someone objects to my working remotely):
- Do not leave the remote access on 24/7. Have someone in-house turn on the remote access software (or enable the firewall rule) on an as-needed basis.
- Use remote access software that you can watch. E.g. VNC for Windows works this way by default. RDP can be used this way. Or, GoToMeeting type meetings.
- Then monitor the screen out of the corner of your eye. Or just give the impression that you do.
Sure, Google wants to hurt MSFT, and MSFT will retaliate where it hurts Google the most, search advertising revenues.
Google is every bit as reliant on Google.com search advertising as Microsoft is with Windows + Office. Just as Chrome OS is a bit of a long shot, so is Bing.com against Google.
No one really wants to see monopolies in any industry, that includes Microsoft in OS's and Google on the Internet. It'll be an interesting competition to watch, and I'm sure we haven't seen the end of it.
I know one person on TTV. He's happy enough - it also worked out to be quite a lot cheaper, they threw in the PVR, I think.
I'm not sure that the 2 TV stream thing is that big a deal for a lot of people. Do a lot of households really expect to watch 3 TV's at once? Would many households admit to it?
And the Internet speed... yep, it's limited, I think it actually goes higher if the TV feeds aren't being used.
I'm surprised that Shaw would be doing this. For the first time ever, they've actually got competition for TV in their key markets. Telus, the incumbent phone company in BC and Alberta (the bulk of the Shaw areas) is now offering TV over ADSL in the major urban areas, and unlike satellite, Telus can offer PPV and all the other TV goodies.
Maybe there is a licensing issue with their channel providers? Otherwise, I don't see the point in antagonizing users - especially since the people who have even heard of FireWire are probably on the higher-end packages.
IMHO, it's mostly script kiddies doing this "hacking". Over the years I have had a few sites developed and largely left to sit for posterity. Unfortunately, the ones that were running off-the-shelf packages such as phpNuke (CMS) or WordPress (blog) or phpBB (forum) have been hacked, or overrun by spammers, at least once. All of those packages had security flaws over the years... some worse than others.
Yes, I should have keep them up to date, but, no I didn't and lot's of people don't.
I want to keep the blog for a crazy project up for kicks, I don't want to keep updating WordPress on every release just to have that privilege.
Anyway, it's getting better these days, all the major packages are much more security aware.
After watching the App Store concept do phenomenally well for Apple for the iPhone / iPod Touch... I think there's only one logical path going forward. Apple will eventually launch an app store for desktop computers through some kind of Virtual Machine (it's convenient that they've moved to x86) that will run on Macs AND Windows. They can sneak it in via iTunes and Quicktime.
As for Sun? Their stupid JVM install system is a mess... how can they get an App store to work any better? I think I've got 5 or 6 JVM installs currently on this laptop from various updates and bundled with things like OpenOffice - that's just confusing.
I don't know what's actually more popular, but I have seen two ways for Chinese input into phones. There are probably more, I'm by no means an expert.
1. Handwriting recognition on a touchscreen, like a PDA. This, I saw a few years ago, I imagine it's a higher-end option.
2. Recognition based on strokes. It's like predictive text. There are only so many directions to draw the a stroke that combines to make the glyph. So you just pick them off the phone, I guess there's a standard pattern, like starting from the top left stroke.
Hopefully someone who knows more can provide more detail.
I use EFS for some folders at work... but at home I cheaped out and got Windows Home edition... or whatever Vista's non-Business edition is called. I use TrueCrypt for the really critical files.
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I've been planning to update my MPEG4 DVD player.
Like the original poster, I want to add web access this time. I've been playing around with an old laptop w/VGA running to the TV, but it's too slow for any HD content... I'm leaning towards a slim HTPC. I realized that those slim computer cases are about the same size as the VCR and other classic stereo components.
For the first time in years (i.e. since I was a teenager pirating computer games from 3.5 inch floppy disks), I got malware on my PC last week. PC Total Defender 2010, I think it called itself.
I couldn't figure out how I got caught. I have the standard firewall and antivirus installed, plus SpyBot's TeaTimer tool. And I tend to browse safe sites, anything questionable is done in a virtual machine.
Anyway, it turns out that my Adobe Reader was somewhat out of date, and I had half a dozen versions of JVM installed. I suspected one of these was at fault.
Crazy. How am I supposed to blame my users now?
I feel sorry for non-geek computer users. It really is tough to tell what is safe software and what isn't.
Personally, I would check sourceforge.net first for an open source equivalent. I'm not an open source zealot, but OSS tends to be malware free, and the bonus is that I can freely give a copy to other people. When that fails nonags.com is where I go. They test for naggy shareware, and I think malware and viruses.
Outside of that? Who knows. I trust my gut based on the website, or I run it in a virtual machine! But other people just don't have that option. Even using Google for the software product + "review" will get you fake affiliate reviews.
Hmm... I think Intel's plan is for Larrabee GPU's to launch at the same time as Duke Nukem Forever! :)
If they're going to redesign the PSU and put it together again, maybe it's time to drop 12V. What components still require 12V other than optical drives, 3.5inch HDDs, and high end video cards? Those are all pretty much optional in servers like FB's.
Cost. The battery pack that will give the Chevy Volt a 40 mile range costs thousands of dollars. GM will likely lose money on the first few years of Volts produced and sold. At $40K (or whatever a Volt is scheduled to cost), it's way out of the price range of a lot of people who just want a basic car.
I was going to suggest UltraVNC Single Click also.
To clarify a bit, it's not the same as regular VNC. You don't need to install anything, just click on the .exe.
Also, it works by creating an outbound TCP connection. So, the remote computer support has to have port forwarding setup, but the person sharing doesn't need to do anything with their router (assuming a standard SOHO router with NAT).
UltraVNC does work with Vista, but I can't comment on Single Click paired with Vista.
I think that recent NVidia drivers all support custom screen resolutions. I would guess that ATI drives do as well. I had to do this once when a customer had an early widescreen LCD whose resolution didn't match any VESA standard, at least, not a common one.
Someone a few posts lower linked to a blog with more info. It says "Mr Lewis calculates a zero-till rig will put 1100 kilograms of air through the tractor engine to work a hectare."
I still don't see how this works, but I'm sure enough people will test it eventually.
I thought Apple dictated unlimited data plans (and visual voicemail) in exchange for the exclusivity agreement with AT&T?
In Canada, it took over a year for Apple and Rogers to agree to terms. The rumored sticking point was again, the data plan. When the iPhone came here, the data plan was a fraction of the cost of existing data plans - even though, it's not unlimited.
I actually browsed the article... it refers to static IP's in ranges that have no "history" on the Internet. I.e. it's not zombie'd home PC's on ADSL or Cable from dynamic IP address ranges.
I'm not sure I understand it, though, wouldn't those be easy to track down to real people?
Maybe banks should figure out a way to send me these kinds of updates by email before trying to Twitter them to me!
There are only 100X more email users out there than Twitter users...
(Yeah, I know there are security issues w/email - the same ones with Twitter)
Stripping HDMI cables out of the package has nothing to do with the console maker's desire to push HD vs SD. MS and Sony dropped the price of their consoles by $50-100, and to help do that, trimming down on the included cables helps.
More importantly, retailers like Best Buy are much happier when they can sell an overpriced $30 HDMI cable to more people - and MS and Sony need their retailers to be happy. It's possible that retailers will make more profit by selling a $30 HDMI cable than selling a $300 console. It's been this way with printers and USB cables for years.
Of course, more and more people are learning that cables can be much cheaper online...
I actually had this exact idea a few years back. I went as far as fiddling with customizing Knoppix. But then I got my first laptop - no Wifi support from ANY LiveCD (at the time). Even the laptop that I'm on now won't get wireless support out of the box with Knoppix (I haven't tried any other LiveCD).
Printer drivers (for receipts) would have been a pain too - I figured on PDFs to Flash drives for this. Never mind the huge hassle of rebooting to do a simple transaction.
I'm all for two factor authentication that works -- how come PayPal.com will send me a single-use, time-limited secondary password by SMS for free (in Canada no less)! It'll be 10 years before a Canadian bank does this...
I have a few system support contracts for some small businesses in town - in person, but a lot of small stuff is done remotely, often after hours.
Honestly, I'm surprised at the amount of trust people have in me, or any other outsourced provider. Basically, I live and die on my reputation... it's funny, I never would have predicted that 10 years ago.
Anyway, if the shoe was on the other foot, I would do the following (this is also my fallback offer if someone objects to my working remotely):
- Do not leave the remote access on 24/7. Have someone in-house turn on the remote access software (or enable the firewall rule) on an as-needed basis.
- Use remote access software that you can watch. E.g. VNC for Windows works this way by default. RDP can be used this way. Or, GoToMeeting type meetings.
- Then monitor the screen out of the corner of your eye. Or just give the impression that you do.
Sure, Google wants to hurt MSFT, and MSFT will retaliate where it hurts Google the most, search advertising revenues.
Google is every bit as reliant on Google.com search advertising as Microsoft is with Windows + Office. Just as Chrome OS is a bit of a long shot, so is Bing.com against Google.
No one really wants to see monopolies in any industry, that includes Microsoft in OS's and Google on the Internet. It'll be an interesting competition to watch, and I'm sure we haven't seen the end of it.
I know one person on TTV. He's happy enough - it also worked out to be quite a lot cheaper, they threw in the PVR, I think.
I'm not sure that the 2 TV stream thing is that big a deal for a lot of people. Do a lot of households really expect to watch 3 TV's at once? Would many households admit to it?
And the Internet speed... yep, it's limited, I think it actually goes higher if the TV feeds aren't being used.
I'm surprised that Shaw would be doing this. For the first time ever, they've actually got competition for TV in their key markets. Telus, the incumbent phone company in BC and Alberta (the bulk of the Shaw areas) is now offering TV over ADSL in the major urban areas, and unlike satellite, Telus can offer PPV and all the other TV goodies.
Maybe there is a licensing issue with their channel providers? Otherwise, I don't see the point in antagonizing users - especially since the people who have even heard of FireWire are probably on the higher-end packages.
I don't think I'd be able to afford a realistic version of the rover... but an officially licensed NASA rover toy would be kind of cool.
IMHO, it's mostly script kiddies doing this "hacking". Over the years I have had a few sites developed and largely left to sit for posterity. Unfortunately, the ones that were running off-the-shelf packages such as phpNuke (CMS) or WordPress (blog) or phpBB (forum) have been hacked, or overrun by spammers, at least once. All of those packages had security flaws over the years... some worse than others.
Yes, I should have keep them up to date, but, no I didn't and lot's of people don't.
I want to keep the blog for a crazy project up for kicks, I don't want to keep updating WordPress on every release just to have that privilege.
Anyway, it's getting better these days, all the major packages are much more security aware.
After watching the App Store concept do phenomenally well for Apple for the iPhone / iPod Touch... I think there's only one logical path going forward. Apple will eventually launch an app store for desktop computers through some kind of Virtual Machine (it's convenient that they've moved to x86) that will run on Macs AND Windows. They can sneak it in via iTunes and Quicktime.
As for Sun? Their stupid JVM install system is a mess... how can they get an App store to work any better? I think I've got 5 or 6 JVM installs currently on this laptop from various updates and bundled with things like OpenOffice - that's just confusing.
I don't know what's actually more popular, but I have seen two ways for Chinese input into phones. There are probably more, I'm by no means an expert.
1. Handwriting recognition on a touchscreen, like a PDA. This, I saw a few years ago, I imagine it's a higher-end option.
2. Recognition based on strokes. It's like predictive text. There are only so many directions to draw the a stroke that combines to make the glyph. So you just pick them off the phone, I guess there's a standard pattern, like starting from the top left stroke.
Hopefully someone who knows more can provide more detail.
Does this special VM of XP improve driver support? I.e. will I be able to stop working around the non-existent Vista drivers for my old laser printer?
How many rocks do I need to chisel to keep a copy of the current Wikipedia? Are there even enough mountains in Egypt for the top 10,000 articles?
I think we'll manage to keep enough of the important data by migrating to newer media over time. Besides, it's not like we have any better options.
I use EFS for some folders at work... but at home I cheaped out and got Windows Home edition... or whatever Vista's non-Business edition is called. I use TrueCrypt for the really critical files.