I was running SETI@Home on all of my computers for a while until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed. Now I do not run any kind of volunteer processing like that. I can also see why it's a bad to install this kind of software at your place of employment. I wish that I could volunteer my computers' time without is costing me extra money to do so.
I think that it's hard to get a full-featured $300 laptop on Black Friday or a $400 laptop any other day because the retailers only sell a very limited number of units at that price. I do agree that the $400 is pricey for the OLPC considering what else is available for $400 (Asus eee) or a little more. Also considering that the eee and other low-cost notebooks have the infrastructure available to support them. I think that the Foundation would get a lot more sales with a 2-for-1 type deal where each US purchase cost $300 and supported half of a laptop for a third-world country. I bought one for $400 because it's such a cool little unit, but at $300 each I definitely would have bought two so that I could play with the mesh networking features. Also, at $300, it's competitive with the Sony eBook reader.
I think that they could put a dent in Microsoft Office if they made the version of StarOffice that they're distributing in the Google Pack work more the way that MS Office does with SharePoint: They now have a very good office software package that they're distributing and they have made it very simple to install and update by making it part of Google Pack. If they tied it into the Web so that you could save directly to your document collection that is part of your Google account, and make it queue the save when you're offline, then they would have the best of both worlds (Google Docs-like Web-based collaboration and powerful PC-resident office software).
I use Comcast cable Internet as my main connection and I have AT&T DSL as a backup. For the past three weeks now, I have been experiencing this problem where I am unable to get to the Google Web site. I am very aware of this problem because I always keep my browser open, iGoogle is my home page, and I browse Web pages often. This problem always happens in the evening, usually between 8 P.M. and 11 P.M. Eastern, usually on weeknights. It happened last night, for example. Several times when I experienced this problem, I tried to access Google using my AT&T DSL connection and had no problems there. I didn't try accessing the exact same IP address for the Google Web server that I was assigned to, to confirm that it was not a problem with Google's Web servers, but it seemed kind of obvious to me that Comcast was interfering with the Google traffic. One other thing that I noticed a couple of times when this occurred is that the response times for a ping of google.com get much longer than normal, in the 500ms range instead of the usual 30ms.
I don't think that's the only reason that their market share is declining. I think that their tech. support has something to do with it. I have had some bad experiences with their tech. support. The last one made me seriously question whether I should ever recommend them again. The situation was that the network adapter failed in a Dell notebook, but their tech. support people failed to accept the possibility of a hardware failure and refused to dispatch an on-site support person to fix it until we had completely reinstalled Windows from scratch. There were two of us who are pretty smart who were working on this problem and we were convinced that it was a hardware failure. Dell's India-based tech. support people really didn't have a clue; their only response was to reinstall Windows to see if it's a Windows software problem. Faced with the potential loss of a day's work to a key executive while we reinstalled Windows and reconfigured his machine with all of the applications he needs, not to mention the fact that we had more pressing technical projects, we decided to purchase a USB Ethernet adapter from Linksys. So now everywhere this guy goes with his notebook, he needs to carry around this lame Linksys USB adapter to get basic Internet connectivity. You'd think that Dell would look up our account, see that we've purchased 30 computers from them in the last five years, then consider providing us with decent support the one time we need it for notebook that had a major component stop working.
This is for Windows: For clients, it takes me about six hours to setup the basic system, then extra time for any specialized software that they need. I do have a list of setup related tasks that I follow pretty closely, then update after each setup to make sure that the procedure remains up to date. When setting up a computer for myself, I follow that same setup list loosely, then I have a list of 60 or so programs that I need to install. That usually takes about 12 hours over and above the six.
I think 80GB at most of client backups. Okay, let me think. I have VOIP phone service too. I wonder if they are just starting this crusade to get rid of their top users, or if I have just found out about it now because I went over their unknown limit for the first time? I wonder if they will be cancelling me next month? The person who I talked to did not indicate either way if they would be getting rid of me as a customer. I am not going to wait to find out. I will be signing up for 1.5Mbps DSL service today just in case.
I got a call from Comcast last week telling me that I used 287GB of bandwidth during the previous month. The person asked me if I had an open wireless network that was maybe being exploited. I told him no, it uses WPA2 security and I doubt that it's being hijacked. I told him that I definitely didn't want to abuse the priviledge of having broadband Internet so I would make sure to cut down my usage. Since then I've been thinking about all the stuff that I did that contributed to that 287GB, none of which was illegal. Let's see, got an XBox, filled the hard disk with demo games. The machine died so I took it back, got a new one, and filled the hard disk with demo games. Downloaded some Linux ISOs. Downloaded from Microsoft MSDN ISOs. Transferred some computer backup files from one my my clients. Got both my TiVos connected to the home network and configured them to download a bunch of TiVocast programs. My wife loves CNN and MSNBC video clips. I don't mind staying within limits, but I would like to know what those limits are. I am wondering if I should order DSL now because Compcast is about to cut me off? I do not think that they are handling this well. I think that it would also help if Comcast would tell me how much I used during the month.
I find that it's best not to use abbreviations when labelling things for later search retrieval, because abbreviations can have multiple meanings and words can have multiple abbeviations: Does "script" mean "shell script" or "prescription?" If there is a commonly abbreviated phrase, I will include the initialism as well as the spelled out phrase: "Local Area Network (LAN)" and "Random Access Memory (RAM)" I also include common synonyms when labelling things like files or e-mail subjects even if it seems redundant: "Measurement Conversion Factors Equivalents List"
I tried it out and though that it was a good program, similar to the Google Desktop Search, until it started crashing my Outlook. Kept getting errors within Outlook that I could not view certain folders because another program that had them opened had crashed. After a couple of Outlook restarts, it got to the point where Outlook would not start at all. It would just freeze at the opening screen. I did like the ability to tell it what folders to search, a feature that Google search is sorely lacking. Of the four search programs I've tried in depth (Google Desktop, MSN Desktop, Copernic, and dtSearch), dtSearch seemed to work the best overall, though there were still files on my server that would crash it during the indexing phase. Copernic did almost as well on indexing, but would frequently crash while searching. Generally, the program seemed fragile. You know, those programs that you can't rely on because they crash way too often that it's hardly worth using them. Google was good, but useless since I couldn't customize it at all. MSN was generally good, but seemed to have a lot of problems related to indexing Outlook e-mail messages. Can someone please come out with a decent desktop search program that understands lots of file formats, does not crash during indexing, do not crash during searching, and works well with Outlook and Outlook Express and other e-mail programs?
I suspect that Walmart will be one of the sophisticated companies that will lookup prices in their database based on the unalterable serial number of the tags when/if they start placing them on individual items.
I consider it important to NOT be annoying to my clients. It's part of my wanting to retain my clients. I see it as my job to help my clients' people understand computers, and being annoying would undermine that goal. Having said that, though, I probably am annoying in general to other people, but not my clients!
They can attempt to end it with legislation but that probably won't have any effect. The solution is going to continue to be a good interceptor like Norton Antivirus 2004, and for those already infected, good cleaner like SpyBot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware.
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
-- Pastor Martin Niemöller
I don't have a problem with blocking access to child porn sites, but it's a slippery slope when governments (or quasi-government organizations) begin censoring content. First it's child porn sites, then it's neo-Nazi sites, then North Korean sites, and pretty soon it's like surfing the Web with NetNanny or CyberPatrol installed. This is not going to stop anyone with any technical knowlege of anonymous proxy services from accessing this illegal content.
slocate is a great little program to speed up the process of finding files on your *nix computer system, but it's not a full-text indexer. Finding the names of files like slocate does is not the same as finding words that appears within those files. It is a great replacement for "find / | grep $PATTERN" though.
I sure could use a good Windows-based replacement for Lotus Magellan. Windows Explorer seems so lame in comparison when it comes to file organization, plus Magellan's full-text search and comprehensive collection of file viewers was great. While I'm reminiscing, I miss Lotus Agenda a lot too. Outlook is nice, but Agenda had some great features that I haven't seen in other organizational programs since.
I hope that it can search for and know about specific objects within popular file formats. For example, search for individual e-mail messages within Microsoft Outlook PST files, search for individual rows within Microsoft Access MDB database files, etc. Searching at the file/document level only is nice, but not nearly as useful as search should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is one chart from ExtrmeTech that illustrates this: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1938042,00.asp
I was running SETI@Home on all of my computers for a while until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed. Now I do not run any kind of volunteer processing like that. I can also see why it's a bad to install this kind of software at your place of employment. I wish that I could volunteer my computers' time without is costing me extra money to do so.
I think that it's hard to get a full-featured $300 laptop on Black Friday or a $400 laptop any other day because the retailers only sell a very limited number of units at that price. I do agree that the $400 is pricey for the OLPC considering what else is available for $400 (Asus eee) or a little more. Also considering that the eee and other low-cost notebooks have the infrastructure available to support them. I think that the Foundation would get a lot more sales with a 2-for-1 type deal where each US purchase cost $300 and supported half of a laptop for a third-world country. I bought one for $400 because it's such a cool little unit, but at $300 each I definitely would have bought two so that I could play with the mesh networking features. Also, at $300, it's competitive with the Sony eBook reader.
I think that they could put a dent in Microsoft Office if they made the version of StarOffice that they're distributing in the Google Pack work more the way that MS Office does with SharePoint: They now have a very good office software package that they're distributing and they have made it very simple to install and update by making it part of Google Pack. If they tied it into the Web so that you could save directly to your document collection that is part of your Google account, and make it queue the save when you're offline, then they would have the best of both worlds (Google Docs-like Web-based collaboration and powerful PC-resident office software).
I use Comcast cable Internet as my main connection and I have AT&T DSL as a backup. For the past three weeks now, I have been experiencing this problem where I am unable to get to the Google Web site. I am very aware of this problem because I always keep my browser open, iGoogle is my home page, and I browse Web pages often. This problem always happens in the evening, usually between 8 P.M. and 11 P.M. Eastern, usually on weeknights. It happened last night, for example. Several times when I experienced this problem, I tried to access Google using my AT&T DSL connection and had no problems there. I didn't try accessing the exact same IP address for the Google Web server that I was assigned to, to confirm that it was not a problem with Google's Web servers, but it seemed kind of obvious to me that Comcast was interfering with the Google traffic. One other thing that I noticed a couple of times when this occurred is that the response times for a ping of google.com get much longer than normal, in the 500ms range instead of the usual 30ms.
I don't think that's the only reason that their market share is declining. I think that their tech. support has something to do with it. I have had some bad experiences with their tech. support. The last one made me seriously question whether I should ever recommend them again. The situation was that the network adapter failed in a Dell notebook, but their tech. support people failed to accept the possibility of a hardware failure and refused to dispatch an on-site support person to fix it until we had completely reinstalled Windows from scratch. There were two of us who are pretty smart who were working on this problem and we were convinced that it was a hardware failure. Dell's India-based tech. support people really didn't have a clue; their only response was to reinstall Windows to see if it's a Windows software problem. Faced with the potential loss of a day's work to a key executive while we reinstalled Windows and reconfigured his machine with all of the applications he needs, not to mention the fact that we had more pressing technical projects, we decided to purchase a USB Ethernet adapter from Linksys. So now everywhere this guy goes with his notebook, he needs to carry around this lame Linksys USB adapter to get basic Internet connectivity. You'd think that Dell would look up our account, see that we've purchased 30 computers from them in the last five years, then consider providing us with decent support the one time we need it for notebook that had a major component stop working.
This is for Windows: For clients, it takes me about six hours to setup the basic system, then extra time for any specialized software that they need. I do have a list of setup related tasks that I follow pretty closely, then update after each setup to make sure that the procedure remains up to date. When setting up a computer for myself, I follow that same setup list loosely, then I have a list of 60 or so programs that I need to install. That usually takes about 12 hours over and above the six.
I think 80GB at most of client backups. Okay, let me think. I have VOIP phone service too. I wonder if they are just starting this crusade to get rid of their top users, or if I have just found out about it now because I went over their unknown limit for the first time? I wonder if they will be cancelling me next month? The person who I talked to did not indicate either way if they would be getting rid of me as a customer. I am not going to wait to find out. I will be signing up for 1.5Mbps DSL service today just in case.
I got a call from Comcast last week telling me that I used 287GB of bandwidth during the previous month. The person asked me if I had an open wireless network that was maybe being exploited. I told him no, it uses WPA2 security and I doubt that it's being hijacked. I told him that I definitely didn't want to abuse the priviledge of having broadband Internet so I would make sure to cut down my usage. Since then I've been thinking about all the stuff that I did that contributed to that 287GB, none of which was illegal. Let's see, got an XBox, filled the hard disk with demo games. The machine died so I took it back, got a new one, and filled the hard disk with demo games. Downloaded some Linux ISOs. Downloaded from Microsoft MSDN ISOs. Transferred some computer backup files from one my my clients. Got both my TiVos connected to the home network and configured them to download a bunch of TiVocast programs. My wife loves CNN and MSNBC video clips. I don't mind staying within limits, but I would like to know what those limits are. I am wondering if I should order DSL now because Compcast is about to cut me off? I do not think that they are handling this well. I think that it would also help if Comcast would tell me how much I used during the month.
I find that it's best not to use abbreviations when labelling things for later search retrieval, because abbreviations can have multiple meanings and words can have multiple abbeviations: Does "script" mean "shell script" or "prescription?" If there is a commonly abbreviated phrase, I will include the initialism as well as the spelled out phrase: "Local Area Network (LAN)" and "Random Access Memory (RAM)" I also include common synonyms when labelling things like files or e-mail subjects even if it seems redundant: "Measurement Conversion Factors Equivalents List"
gens.consolemul.com is the home of the Gens emulator for Sega Genesis / Megadrive, Sega CD / Mega CD, and Sega 32X.
I tried it out and though that it was a good program, similar to the Google Desktop Search, until it started crashing my Outlook. Kept getting errors within Outlook that I could not view certain folders because another program that had them opened had crashed. After a couple of Outlook restarts, it got to the point where Outlook would not start at all. It would just freeze at the opening screen. I did like the ability to tell it what folders to search, a feature that Google search is sorely lacking. Of the four search programs I've tried in depth (Google Desktop, MSN Desktop, Copernic, and dtSearch), dtSearch seemed to work the best overall, though there were still files on my server that would crash it during the indexing phase. Copernic did almost as well on indexing, but would frequently crash while searching. Generally, the program seemed fragile. You know, those programs that you can't rely on because they crash way too often that it's hardly worth using them. Google was good, but useless since I couldn't customize it at all. MSN was generally good, but seemed to have a lot of problems related to indexing Outlook e-mail messages. Can someone please come out with a decent desktop search program that understands lots of file formats, does not crash during indexing, do not crash during searching, and works well with Outlook and Outlook Express and other e-mail programs?
What's really pathetic is that it took three people to invent the IsNot operator!
I suspect that Walmart will be one of the sophisticated companies that will lookup prices in their database based on the unalterable serial number of the tags when/if they start placing them on individual items.
I consider it important to NOT be annoying to my clients. It's part of my wanting to retain my clients. I see it as my job to help my clients' people understand computers, and being annoying would undermine that goal. Having said that, though, I probably am annoying in general to other people, but not my clients!
Maybe if he spent a little more time looking for work and less time driving around drinking coffee, he'd have a job!
I feel so spoiled with my four PC's; one keyboard, monitor, and mouse.
They can attempt to end it with legislation but that probably won't have any effect. The solution is going to continue to be a good interceptor like Norton Antivirus 2004, and for those already infected, good cleaner like SpyBot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware.
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
-- Pastor Martin Niemöller
I don't have a problem with blocking access to child porn sites, but it's a slippery slope when governments (or quasi-government organizations) begin censoring content. First it's child porn sites, then it's neo-Nazi sites, then North Korean sites, and pretty soon it's like surfing the Web with NetNanny or CyberPatrol installed. This is not going to stop anyone with any technical knowlege of anonymous proxy services from accessing this illegal content.
This might work too as it's not supposed to affect the people in any way! (Directly, that is.)
slocate is a great little program to speed up the process of finding files on your *nix computer system, but it's not a full-text indexer. Finding the names of files like slocate does is not the same as finding words that appears within those files. It is a great replacement for "find / | grep $PATTERN" though.
I sure could use a good Windows-based replacement for Lotus Magellan. Windows Explorer seems so lame in comparison when it comes to file organization, plus Magellan's full-text search and comprehensive collection of file viewers was great. While I'm reminiscing, I miss Lotus Agenda a lot too. Outlook is nice, but Agenda had some great features that I haven't seen in other organizational programs since.
I hope that it can search for and know about specific objects within popular file formats. For example, search for individual e-mail messages within Microsoft Outlook PST files, search for individual rows within Microsoft Access MDB database files, etc. Searching at the file/document level only is nice, but not nearly as useful as search should be.
If anyone names their dot com company "hoinkel doinkel," my three-year-old son is going to sue their ass off!
1T"S A*B*O*U*T F_C_KING T!ME smoenoe got a rest ed 4 ths!!!