>> But the nagging lack of applications for desktop Linux, >> notably Microsoft Office, still hangs in the air.
Huh? Is it "Office" or "applications compatible with the inscrutable, obese, proprietary POWERPOINT and WORD formats"?
Why don't companies just stipulate "junk the proprietary formats"?
In my opinion, from there onwards, moving to alternatives to MS is a downhill race.
* Desktop behaviour is relatively easy to tune up.
* Dumping Outlook for Evolution by migrating the whole message and contact base AUTOMATICALLY is just a few scripts away.
* Office productivity functionality is basically there, 'cept a large number of baroque MSFT flourishings few will miss
- and BY THE WAY... I see it's only fitting that corporations and governments are beginning to bite: they may WANT a well targeted, limited-scope desktop for their worker bees to replace the MSFT bottomless gusher of uncontrollable, undocumented, unrequested, useless funkshownality.
- Power: cables, wall warts, adapters etc.; big clothing store shopping paper bags with handles (easy to write on!) - digital signal cabling: as above, with separate bags for ethernet and PC peripherals + mice; ethernet bag also contains cable tester, crimping tool, a tiny see thru bag full of spare plugs, extra cable - RF signal cabling: as above - spare wire (hookup, ac, dc, antenna, coax): as above - audio/video signal cabling: incl. headsets, mikes etc.; as above, smaller bags. All these bags lead to efficient use of shelf space, on shelves 1 and 1/2 feet apart.
- PC guts: wrapped in alufoil, marked with labels made with 1-inch Post-It stripe, lined up by function, i.e. ram, CPUs, HDs, power, audio, video, etc on a few dedicated shelves in cupboard - larger items (VDUs, cases etc.) in basement, either in large boxes or in polypropylene "foil-pipe", the same used for protecting apparel or furniture - screws etc. in a few flat handy boxes (shipping boxes for RAM) where all are visible; identical mix - software & data CDs: in shoeboxes (just perfect!), segregated by OS and into free / pay apps by means of cardboard separators; substituting most original cases with slim ones - a neat stack of CD jewel cases: as media on spindles is now cheaper than cases, I recycle cases religiously - manuals: if original, _striclty_ lined up by size/color (I use visual memory), if self printed, segregated by OS, with label handwritten on plastic binding
- for smaller RF electronics parts, I mostly use sets of sturdy, sealable, transparent, plastic food bags, segregated by broad categories, in turn contained in shipping boxes; being transparent (and not too full) the process of turning them upside down, around etc rummaging for parts is surprisingly fast and not messy at all; this too is mostly an aid to visual memory; some component leads stick out, but who cares - only static sensitive devices are stored separately, in antistatic bags in a smaller box
I do not listen to music, nor play games, so I really have no use for sound, cept streaming news and getting system alerts. Mono is sufficient for that, so using a modern set of 2 or more amplified PC speakers would have seemed rather inelegant to me - if not necessarily a high-cost choice.
I revived a 1973 device that was used to receive music on low-radio-frequency FM carriers (in the same frequency spectrum as today's DSL) over telephone twisted pair, which was a popular service in many European countries before the massive advent of commercial FM broadcasting.
I plucked out the RF board, changed several AC filtering capacitors, added a few in/out sockets, and got myself a nice sounding amplified speaker, with probably around 3W output, built-in power supply, a very retro wood finish, and separate volume-treble-bass controls.
I had considered using a tube amp, but my energy consciousness kept me from seriously looking around for one.
I have abt. 500MB of stuff on my pennyless-friend-saver Windows CD. My selection for you is not all from this CD though.
I still use Win9x, and will keep on til forced to upgrade by the Mob. (I also use Debian, of course).
On 9X the key problem is keeping the PC alive and healthy -> use as little MS products as you can.
So, in order:
1)) Use Ranish Partition Manager from a Windows boot floppy to cut up all the partitions you need. Remember to mimic on the Win side a multi-partition scheme as the one on Linux (My values: System 5GB, temp 0.5, swap 0.5, and two data partitions for hot & cold data, + a 5GB extra partition for a mirror of the clean-installed system). Leave Ranish installed on Windows to hack up partitions other than the system one, and to check if the partition table is healthy.
2) Opera or Mozilla for browser, mail, (and with Mozilla also newsreader / HTML editor), so you can use Internet Explorer ONLY FOR WINDOWS UPDATE, THE OCCASIONAL STUPID IE-ONLY SITE, AND NOTHING ELSE. Notice that Opera can also update your Java support.
3) Computer Associates' EZ Armor. Their customer service is not that good, but their sw is excellent, reasonably lightweight, non-intrusive and not very expensive. Do NOT use their firewall.
4) If you can, get an OLDER (before V.3) Zonalarm Pro firewall. Lighter, more stable, enough fine grain selective port enabling. If you can't find it, do use the Armor firewall.
5) X-teq's X-Setup for moving around key data locations (eg, putting all temp files on the temp drive etc etc) and reconfiguring the living daylights out of the irrational and selfdestructive original Windows setup.
6) Open Office is fine and getting better. Sadly, Microsoft's ugly secret formats have not been completely reverse engineered. If you have to use MS Office, see if you can get a legal 2nd hand copy of the '97 version - AFAIK, it was still the most popular with US corporations as of 2002.
7) Multimedia: try to get the old Windows Media Player 6.4 for basic use. I suggest not to touch the more recent versions, which I consider bordering on malware. But do install it, to get all the new dll's - only do not associate it with any filetypes. Also install the latest Quicktime and Real One free players. But for the actual interface, I prefer the older WinAmps (v. 2.x), which is still actively maintained. There may be issues on whether the latest Real EULA allows other sw to use its dll's... find out.
8) Basic CD burning: try by all means BurnFree! It works, stable, lots of tweaks, AFAIK not spyware, although it will explicitly install an "updater" that will later try to install an adware navigation "helper" for IE (not yet available as of last month - bizarre!). It's easy to catch and restrain the updater via ZoneAlarm.
[ Be nice, it's not OS but they give you decent free software hoping to make a buck, so let them "drive" your IE and look at some of their ads, or send them a donation. When I get a job I prolly will. And for that matter, thank generously the sources of good, decent sw you use, OS or not... perhaps not Time Warner Corp. (WinAmp), but u get the idea. ]
9) PDF READER - I avoid Adobe reader like the claps. Yes, get it, it's free and OK but it never shuts up (or down). Get GSview and the Ghostscript libraries for normal use. Leaner, stabler. Only for the nastier of pdf files you'll really need Adobe.
I do not have a 10), but a number of really-nice-to-have's, most free, some OS, or at least cheap and hi-Q shareware, in no particular order:
Picture viewer: IrfanView.
Graphic manipulation: WinGIMP.
Process management: Process Explorer.
Archiver: Ultimate Zip (also, 7-ZIP for the Unixoid formats)
HTML Reader / barebones graphic browser: Off-By-One (fast!!!)
I find it sadly bizarre that OS's hopes are supported by the likes of China. Luckily China is not alone. Mr. Gates probably can't bribe THE WHOLE WORLD into doing his bidding. And once again, as in the Cold War, an outside stimulus may yet spur that strange beast, democratic capitalism, to do better than it would have done otherwise.
I already wrote to Phoenix and told them that until further notice I will spec PCs with non-Phoenix BIOSes and will suggest clients to do the same and why, EVEN FOR WINDOWS-ONLY PCs. No matter that the product is still at vapor stage - they should begin to understand that a microsofted BIOS is potentially a chip non gratum.
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>> But the nagging lack of applications for desktop Linux,
>> notably Microsoft Office, still hangs in the air.
Huh? Is it "Office" or "applications compatible with the inscrutable, obese, proprietary POWERPOINT and WORD formats"?
Why don't companies just stipulate "junk the proprietary formats"?
In my opinion, from there onwards, moving to alternatives to MS is a downhill race.
* Desktop behaviour is relatively easy to tune up.
* Dumping Outlook for Evolution by migrating the whole message and contact base AUTOMATICALLY is just a few scripts away.
* Office productivity functionality is basically there, 'cept a large number of baroque MSFT flourishings few will miss
- and BY THE WAY... I see it's only fitting that corporations and governments are beginning to bite: they may WANT a well targeted, limited-scope desktop for their worker bees to replace the MSFT bottomless gusher of uncontrollable, undocumented, unrequested, useless funkshownality.
- Power: cables, wall warts, adapters etc.; big clothing store shopping paper bags with handles (easy to write on!) /video signal cabling: incl. headsets, mikes etc.; as above, smaller bags.
- digital signal cabling: as above, with separate bags for ethernet and PC peripherals + mice; ethernet bag also contains cable tester, crimping tool, a tiny see thru bag full of spare plugs, extra cable
- RF signal cabling: as above
- spare wire (hookup, ac, dc, antenna, coax): as above
- audio
All these bags lead to efficient use of shelf space, on shelves 1 and 1/2 feet apart.
- PC guts: wrapped in alufoil, marked with labels made with 1-inch Post-It stripe, lined up by function, i.e. ram, CPUs, HDs, power, audio, video, etc on a few dedicated shelves in cupboard
- larger items (VDUs, cases etc.) in basement, either in large boxes or in polypropylene "foil-pipe", the same used for protecting apparel or furniture
- screws etc. in a few flat handy boxes (shipping boxes for RAM) where all are visible; identical mix
- software & data CDs: in shoeboxes (just perfect!), segregated by OS and into free / pay apps by means of cardboard separators; substituting most original cases with slim ones
- a neat stack of CD jewel cases: as media on spindles is now cheaper than cases, I recycle cases religiously
- manuals: if original, _striclty_ lined up by size/color (I use visual memory), if self printed, segregated by OS, with label handwritten on plastic binding
- for smaller RF electronics parts, I mostly use sets of sturdy, sealable, transparent, plastic food bags, segregated by broad categories, in turn contained in shipping boxes; being transparent (and not too full) the process of turning them upside down, around etc rummaging for parts is surprisingly fast and not messy at all; this too is mostly an aid to visual memory; some component leads stick out, but who cares
- only static sensitive devices are stored separately, in antistatic bags in a smaller box
>> Password stealing is pretty OS independent. So this compromise, whilst undenyably bad,
>> isn't really going to show much about Debian, or Windows
it does make me nervous about the whole organization, on which the distro and my OS depend
You might just be right in calling me a moron,
but would you elaborate a bit?
TIA
>> With yet another mistake, does anyone
>> still trust closed-source electronic voting?
What mistake?
Removing unwashed semiilliterates
from the political loop
can't be a bad thing.
Kudos to the political-electoral-industrial complex for finally putting
right-thinking adults in charge of the world's one and only superpower!
Jail that Soros communist agitator!
Bomb Iran (or was it Iraq? Whatever. Both.)
And buy MSFT & SCOC stock gift certificates for Christmas!
If you have to use crippled neoconservative malware like windows XP, why not bite the bullet and install it on FAT32?
I for one don't like to use a proprietary filesystem I can't write to from another OS.
With a proper data mirroring and system backup policy, who cares if the OS dies once in a while?
In my opinion, the pluses far outweigh any disadvantages from loss of journaling.
And there are plenty of ways of encrypting sensitive data.
Moreover - I know, this is just wild association - as someone added NTFS to DOS, did anyone manage to do ext3 or reiserfs on XP?
Too many comments are just hip shots. Uninformed. Noisy. Boring. Please go see both RH and Fedora before posting.
I pay about $.30 per kWh (Italy). All thermal, cept what we buy from Swiss & French companies that run the nuke stations we do not want to have here.
.09kW x 8768h = 789kWh =~ $236
Headless, my Piii/866 burns about 90W at full blast, 70 on idle. I keep all HDs spinning all the time when the PC is on.
Without DC running, I keep the machine off about half the time, so my delta is
* $10 a month for the full-off hours
* another $2/mo. for the load delta
That's about $ 140-150 / yr.
I gave up on DC but not before considering setting up a farm at a friend's factory in Switzerland, 1h drive from here.
Too much trouble, and I am not that good at remote maintenance.
>> How much CPU cycles are wasted on Pr0n,
>> and how does this help society?
Good question.
And BTW, how does the BSOD help society?
I do not listen to music, nor play games, so I really have no use for sound, cept streaming news and getting system alerts. Mono is sufficient for that, so using a modern set of 2 or more amplified PC speakers would have seemed rather inelegant to me - if not necessarily a high-cost choice.
I revived a 1973 device that was used to receive music on low-radio-frequency FM carriers (in the same frequency spectrum as today's DSL) over telephone twisted pair, which was a popular service in many European countries before the massive advent of commercial FM broadcasting.
I plucked out the RF board, changed several AC filtering capacitors, added a few in/out sockets, and got myself a nice sounding amplified speaker, with probably around 3W output, built-in power supply, a very retro wood finish, and separate volume-treble-bass controls.
I had considered using a tube amp, but my energy consciousness kept me from seriously looking around for one.
Right, a home machine has to be preconfigured for for porn viewing!
Let's parents and kids fight over porn instead of boring issues like global warming or terrorism!
There's an open source application that is just perfect for that: porngrab for Windows.
There must be some connection with Lesbian Linux, but I do not know what it is.
http://kohlbeck.xs4all.nl/pgrab/
I have abt. 500MB of stuff on my pennyless-friend-saver Windows CD. My selection for you is not all from this CD though.
I still use Win9x, and will keep on til forced to upgrade by the Mob. (I also use Debian, of course).
On 9X the key problem is keeping the PC alive and healthy -> use as little MS products as you can.
So, in order:
1)) Use Ranish Partition Manager from a Windows boot floppy to cut up all the partitions you need. Remember to mimic on the Win side a multi-partition scheme as the one on Linux (My values: System 5GB, temp 0.5, swap 0.5, and two data partitions for hot & cold data, + a 5GB extra partition for a mirror of the clean-installed system). Leave Ranish installed on Windows to hack up partitions other than the system one, and to check if the partition table is healthy.
2) Opera or Mozilla for browser, mail, (and with Mozilla also newsreader / HTML editor), so you can use Internet Explorer ONLY FOR WINDOWS UPDATE, THE OCCASIONAL STUPID IE-ONLY SITE, AND NOTHING ELSE. Notice that Opera can also update your Java support.
3) Computer Associates' EZ Armor. Their customer service is not that good, but their sw is excellent, reasonably lightweight, non-intrusive and not very expensive. Do NOT use their firewall.
4) If you can, get an OLDER (before V.3) Zonalarm Pro firewall. Lighter, more stable, enough fine grain selective port enabling. If you can't find it, do use the Armor firewall.
5) X-teq's X-Setup for moving around key data locations (eg, putting all temp files on the temp drive etc etc) and reconfiguring the living daylights out of the irrational and selfdestructive original Windows setup.
6) Open Office is fine and getting better. Sadly, Microsoft's ugly secret formats have not been completely reverse engineered. If you have to use MS Office, see if you can get a legal 2nd hand copy of the '97 version - AFAIK, it was still the most popular with US corporations as of 2002.
7) Multimedia: try to get the old Windows Media Player 6.4 for basic use. I suggest not to touch the more recent versions, which I consider bordering on malware. But do install it, to get all the new dll's - only do not associate it with any filetypes. Also install the latest Quicktime and Real One free players. But for the actual interface, I prefer the older WinAmps (v. 2.x), which is still actively maintained. There may be issues on whether the latest Real EULA allows other sw to use its dll's... find out.
8) Basic CD burning: try by all means BurnFree! It works, stable, lots of tweaks, AFAIK not spyware, although it will explicitly install an "updater" that will later try to install an adware navigation "helper" for IE (not yet available as of last month - bizarre!). It's easy to catch and restrain the updater via ZoneAlarm.
[ Be nice, it's not OS but they give you decent free software hoping to make a buck, so let them "drive" your IE and look at some of their ads, or send them a donation. When I get a job I prolly will. And for that matter, thank generously the sources of good, decent sw you use, OS or not... perhaps not Time Warner Corp. (WinAmp), but u get the idea. ]
9) PDF READER - I avoid Adobe reader like the claps. Yes, get it, it's free and OK but it never shuts up (or down). Get GSview and the Ghostscript libraries for normal use. Leaner, stabler. Only for the nastier of pdf files you'll really need Adobe.
I do not have a 10), but a number of really-nice-to-have's, most free, some OS, or at least cheap and hi-Q shareware, in no particular order:
Picture viewer: IrfanView.
Graphic manipulation: WinGIMP.
Process management: Process Explorer.
Archiver: Ultimate Zip (also, 7-ZIP for the Unixoid formats)
HTML Reader / barebones graphic browser: Off-By-One (fast!!!)
Basic crypto: Blowfish Advanced CS
Instant Messaging: Trillian (multi-network, + IRC too)
Defragmenting (front end): Power Defrag
Linux directory
I find it sadly bizarre that OS's hopes are supported by the likes of China. Luckily China is not alone. Mr. Gates probably can't bribe THE WHOLE WORLD into doing his bidding. And once again, as in the Cold War, an outside stimulus may yet spur that strange beast, democratic capitalism, to do better than it would have done otherwise.
I already wrote to Phoenix and told them that until further notice I will spec PCs with non-Phoenix BIOSes and will suggest clients to do the same and why, EVEN FOR WINDOWS-ONLY PCs. No matter that the product is still at vapor stage - they should begin to understand that a microsofted BIOS is potentially a chip non gratum.