I assume that an ad-supported version of Windows would most likely involve some type of tracking and loss of privacy. Perhaps some type of spyware would monitor your browsing and searching habits so that advertisers could send you targeted advertising. Is that how it would work?
I already use a free OS, I use Linux. I do not need an ad-supported version of Windows. I like the fact that most common spyware won't run on Linux. Viruses and worms won't either for that matter. I value my privacy and don't want more spyware or ads.
Despite being free and having no ad-revenues, Linux has done surprisingly well at getting better every year. If fact many of the new "innovative" features Microsoft has been bragging about for Vista are already available for Linux. Linux even has some of the features that were cut from Vista so that it would be released on time. Vista will have "Instant Search" while Linux already has the Beagle desktop search program. Vista will have its new "Aero" graphical interface while some versions of Linux already have XGL graphics. Instead of everyone in Windows usually being an administrator, Vista will have more of a Unix/Linux style security. Linux has always done it that way. Vista will have desktop widgets, Linux already has SuperKarama. I could go on.
I admit there actually are various pros and cons in the Windows vs. Linux argument, but my point is that, there already is a good free operating system that is doing just fine without having to resort to ad-supported revenues. No, never in a million years for me.
According to a recent newspaper article, the new voting machines that will be used where I live will also print out paper stubs. I don't recall all the details, but the voter briefly gets to view the stub for accurary before it is stored somewhere. The paper stubs counld be used to do a recount. I am not sure what company makes those machines, but I doubt that it is Diebold.
Without a paper stub and the possibility of a recount, I would never trust a closed-source operating system on proprietary harware whose inner workings are understood by only a few political insiders and company employees. That is expecially true with Diebold and their history of security flaws.
Several years ago copies of what was allegedly the software used on Diebold voting machines was found on an unsecure sever and posted on the Internet? The software was examined and various outrageous securtity flaws and a back door was also found. Various websites at the time, suggested that you download the software and then follow their instructions to see for yourself how easy it was to use the back door to edit totals in an undetectable way. The software and the instructions quickly appeared and dissappeared for short periods of time from various websites around the world as lawyers went about getting websites to remove the illegal material. How many people here remember that incident? Is some version of that same software still being used on Diebold machines today or not? They also posted what allegedly were internal Diebold email messages from employees discussing various security problems but did not seem concerned about the problems.
BlackBoxVoting.org has a free online book in PDF form. If I remember correctly, later versions of their book had several new chapters on that incident. I haven't stayed up on the issue or with what that organization is doing or what the latest voting machines are like..
All voting machines should be required to print out stubs. Either that or use older methods (possibly with the hanging chads problem and all). Ironically, Diebold's ATMs used at banks print out receipts, so they already have the technology. They would just need to use that existing technology and have the receipts or stubs put in a ballet box for recounting purposes.
I am in the green area on your map and have not yet been able to get high-speed Internet access. I live slightly beyond the end of the local cable-TV system. DSL is not yet available in my neighborhood either. The last time I checked, a hill blocked my being able to receive wireless Internet from a local internet provider at 256K - 1MB speeds. I could get a Starband satellite dish for Internet but that is significantly more than I am willing to pay. It is still dial-up only here.
The telephone lines in my neighborhood are only good for 26.4K. We don't yet have 28.8K, 32K or 56K. A QWest repairman told me that, unoffically, he had heard that sometime in the next year our neighborhood will be upgraded and DSL will then be available.
I am in Arizona, but am not out in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside I can see a fancy gated community and their golf course nearby. I can also see an airport, a hospital, a large hotel, a casino and a private university. This is not somewhere out in the boondocks.
Don't forget the RFID tagged world that we are heading into. Companies such as Wall-Mart and several government agencies have been pushing hard to add RFID spychips to everything that we purchase. Soon we will be wearing RFID tagged clothing and shoes. Our wallets will have RFID tags in our charge cards and passports. We will be driving around in cars with RFID tags in the tires and elsewhere.
Each and every RFID tag will have a unique serial number and we will secretly be scanned when entering stores. Upon checking out our RFID tagged items we will show them our shoppers discount card and pay by charge card where our personal information will be updated in various computer databases. Who knows what personal information will then eventually be shared with credit agencies, advertisers and the governemnt.
As we drive around the country hidden scanners in highways will secretly log our movements at key points. And of course all the young people proudly carry their cell phones everywhere. I have heard that cell phones regularly transmit which cell tower they are closest to even when they are turned off. Only removing the battery or perhaps placing it in a Faraday cage would stop that.
If I understand correctly the USDA wants animal ID for all animals in micro-farms for every sheep, chicken, goat or other animal. That would most likely involve using RFID Tags to track your food. Perhaps they are afraid that that someone could actually buy their food from somewhere in cash without big brother having a record. There is an organization called NoNAIS that is opposed to those proposed rules.
Marketing researchers and the police will be able to inventory the contents of our garbage cans with hand held scanners without even opening the lid.
Many of us even have pets which have been RFID tagged in case they get lost. Some (but not all) Christians believe that RFID chips or something similar implanted into the back of the hands or our foreheads will be the "mark of the beast" described in the Bible. Even if it doesn't go that far, RFID sypchips could play a major role in bringing us into a "1984" like world. Add RFID technology to what other people have said and I think we seriously could be heading towards the future that George Orwell warned us about in the book "1984". Perhaps I should take my tin foil hat off now and just relax, this is still America after all.
I live in Arizona and dial-up is all that is available where I live. Neither cable or DSL from the phone company is available here. The telephone lines in my neighborhood are only good for 26.4K, so here I am right now, on my 2.4 GHz computer, with a 56K modem, connected with a 26.4K dial-up connection.
I live in a smaller city, up in the mountains in Arizona, but I am not way out in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside, not too far away, I can see a small airport, a private university, a hospital, a golf course, a gated community, an Indian casino, a hotel and hundreds of homes. Lately I have seen the TV commercials from QWest which make disparaging comments about dial-up and suggest getting inexpensive QWest DSL instead. So I called them and they told me that DSL is not available where I live. Unofficially, a QWest repairman recently told me that he had heard that my neighborhood is scheduled to be upgraded by adding a switch nearby sometime within the next year. Lately, someone is digging a 2 mile long ditch nearby and laying plastic conduit. QWest telephone trucks have occasionally been parked along the ditch so I hope that means that they are finally upgrading our neighborhood.
A local Internet provider recently placed an antenna on another hill which might possibly be accessible from where I live and would offer a reasonably high-speed wireless Internet connection at an acceptable price. A more expensive satellite connection from Starband is another option but I don't really want anything too expensive. It's not like 26.4K dial-up is really that bad if you don't have sypware, if you block as many ads as possible, and mostly visit less graphics intense websites such as Slashdot. If I need to download a large file I have it download most of the night while I am asleep or else take a laptop over to a small Cafe which has free WiFi.
There is a new article on Groklaw which says that the facts in the Forbes article are incorrect. The Groklaw article says:
First, SCO has not filed a motion for sanctions for spoliation. That's the way to get an issue regarding missing evidence properly before a judge. It has not happened. I checked Pacer.
Second, SCO didn't file any motions in March of 2006, sealed or otherwise, despite Forbes "reporting" that SCO filed the allegations as part of a sealed motion that month ("Hatch, SCO's attorney, says SCO learned about the destruction of code when it took depositions from IBM programmers. This is the first time SCO has made the allegation in public, though Hatch says the claim was part of a motion SCO filed in March 2006, which has remained sealed.").
Well, I don't know who got it wrong, Hatch or Forbes, but that's just not true. I note for the record that it was not Boies Schiller who did the interview.
The Groklaw webpage also says:
Those are two facts that any reporter could have and should have checked prior to publishing a story implying either was true. They could have just looked on the Docket on Pacer. If they don't know how, they could have asked me. Just because you get a call from SCO, it doesn't mean you publish as is, without even checking the facts. If you don't want to check Pacer, just look on the IBM Timeline page Groklaw provides as an educational service to the public, and look for yourself. This is all just a media event, as far as I can see, in SCO's primary case, the one it is trying in the court of public opinion.
Back in 2003 SCO held a media event called the SCO forum where then CEO Darl McBride said this:
"They have found already a mountain of code," he said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."
That and this next quote came from a CNET News article from August 2003 which also goes on to describe some of what Chris Sontag, head of the company's SCOsource effort had to say:
"I can understand one or two lines being in common," said Sontag, who is charged with maintaining the company's intellectual property rights surrounding Unix. "But when you're talking about this level of variables being the same...the comment sections all being the same, it's problematic."
Sontag then showed, in a series of slides, Linux code that he claimed has been literally copied from Unix. He said numerous comments, unusual spellings and typographical errors had also been copied directly into Linux.
So, if any of that was really ever true, then why doesn't SCO just show the judge the mountain of evidence which they angrily told the media about back in mid-2003? Instead, according to the Forbes article, they are now complaining that "code deletion is one reason why the Lindon, Utah, software maker has been unable to comply with a demand that it produce examples of allegedly stolen code."
"It's kind of hard for us to do that," says Brent Hatch, an attorney with Hatch, James & Dodge in Salt Lake City, "because we don't have it. It was destroyed before it could be given to us."
You're right about it being possible to run Internet Explorer under wine. I had not heard of Es4Linux, but I had heard of running Internet Explorer under Linux with the help of "CrossOver Office". It is a slightly enhanced version of Wine made by CodeWeavers. The Codeweavers website mentions running Internet Explorer 6.0 under Linux. Will that allow me to run Windows spyware just like Windows users do? Probably not, but for the last few years I have used the "CodeWeavers CrossOver Office" version of Wine to run MS Office 2000 under Linux although I mostly use the Linux version of Open Office instead of MS Office.
I use a similar ad blocking hosts file on both my Linux computer and on the Windows XP computer. I have been using "Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file" for several years now on both computers. Like the modified hosts file you mentioned, Mike's modified hosts file also diverts the URLs for most ad servers to the 127.0.0.1 loop-back address that all computers have. His webpage has instructions for using his modified hosts file in either Windows, MAC, Linux and Unix. He regularly comes out with updated versions of his hosts file.
You also mention using a more secure operating system, I use Linux instead of Windows most of the time at home. Of course I don't use Internet Explorer on the Linux computer since it isn't even avilable for Linux and would not want to anyway. I use the Linux version of Firefox instead. Spyware, viruses and worms are almost unheard of under non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux or Mac OS X.
A 26.4K Internet connection is all that is available in my neighborhood. The Internet looks the same on my relatively new AMD 64 3800+ computer as it does on my old 266 MHz Pentium II computer. I live in a small city in Arizona and QWest is the local telephone company. On TV every evening lately I see the QWest commercial that makes disparaging comments about dial-up Internet. The commercial says to get inexpensive DSL high-speed Internet access instead. Whenever I call them they always tell me that DSL is not available where I live. They haven't even been willing to upgrade the local telephone lines so that 56k or 28.8 would be available to me or my neighbors. I don't have cable where I live either.
So anyway I don't have any reason to want to upgrade my computer.
As a Linux user, it is really nice not having to worry about spyware or even worms or viruses. I am not really an expert or sure exactly why only Windows users have those problems. Perhaps Linux and Mac users do not have enough market share to be worth targeting. As far as the lack viruses and worms for Linux and Mac OS X, there might be other reasons such as IE's support for Active X and the fact that most Windows users at home don't use a separate administrative account.
I wonder if perhaps the genetic diversity of the software on most Linux computers might also make it somewhat harder to write spyware (and also viruses) that work properly on all computers. Linux users use a variety of different email programs, browsers, kernels and versions of Linux. By comparison Windows is an in-bred monoculture with most users using outlook and IE and the same identical kernel.
Perhaps they just feel we aren't worth bothering with. I suppose that someone could theoretically write Linux spyware, then make it available to be downloaded in DEB, RPM, TGZ, and also source code formats. Then they could try to persuade me to download and install their spyware in whichever package format is appropriate for the version of Linux that I use. Next, I would probably be asked for my root password so their spyware could be properly installed with the necessary privileges. Yes, I suppose that could happen.
But anyway, I also use a modified hosts file to divert most known advertising related URL's to the 127.0.0.1 loop-back address on my computer. I use Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file which can be used with either Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac OSX. Many web pages have some background communication going to those advertising related URL's, much of which can be blocked by a modified hosts file. I hope that it includes the latest URL's for Direct Revenue and most similar spyware companies. I'm not sure, but I update the hosts file regularly anyway.
One last defensive trick that I use is, on the Thunderbird email program, I chose the option to not automatically display remote images unless they come from someone that is in my address book. Allowing those images to be displayed would require the images to be download from some remote IP address and (I suppose) that might also allow them to detect my IP address and be able to tell that I received their spam. Most email programs (even Outlook) has similar options.
The article could have at least mentioned the "we" don't all have a problem with spyware
DOS is one of several operating systems that I have installed and can boot-up into on my AMD Athlon 64 3800+ computer. I actually have PC-DOS 2000 (instead of FreeDOS) installed on the first partition of my first harddrive, it is a FAT-16 partition. When booting up, a menu appears that allows me to choose whether to boot up into Windows 2000, PC-DOS 2000. or one of several different versions of Linux. PC-DOS 2000 was a minor Y2K upgrade of the Last version of DOS that IBM had released. As you may recall, Microsoft and IBM each had their own versions of DOS since back in the 1980's Surprisingly, my AMD Athlon 64 can run more than just 64-bit software. I don't recall if DOS is 16-bit software or what, but it runs just fine on my AMD Athon 64.
The obvious question is why would anyone want to run DOS on a modern computer? Well, I have fond memories of tinkering with batch files, DOS commands and old DOS games back in the late 1980's and early 1990s. Every once in a while, I like to re-experience the retro experience of what it was like to run DOS. I do not boot-up into DOS very often, but I am glad that I can choose to boot up into DOS once in a while when I want to. Of course Linux, Windows or almost any other modern OS is actually better on a modern desktop computer for everyday use.
I actually have a mixture of Free-DOS and PC-DOS 2000 installed on the fat-16 partition. If I remember correctly, I did that by installing FreeDOS first and then later installing PC-DOS 2000 on top of it. Afterwards, I then manually edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to remove any wierdness that resulted from istalling both that way. I had a slight preference for the PC-DOS 2000 but doing it that way gave me all the extra free software and some Linux/Unix like commands that come with the FreeDOS. Am I the only one out there who occasionally boots his AMD Athlon 64 3800+ up into DOS?
There are actually several choices for running old DOS programs. One choice is Free-DOS. Another choice is DR-DOS/OpenDOS which, if I understand correctly, is a commercial product in which the source code of the kernel has been under an Open Source license. Another alternative is to run the free DOSBox emulator under Windows or Linux. Using DOSBox I have been able to run old DOS games such as "Commader Keen" under Linux and even managed to get my USB joystick and modern soundcard to work with it. Yet another option is to use VMWare to create a virtual machine for FreeDOS and run it in a virtual machine under either Linux or Windows. Even though their are other alternatives, I am glad to see that the FreeDOS project is still alive and about to release version 1.0.
According to his article, 23 states now have credit freeze protection laws. The proposed law in congress would essentially invalidate all of these state laws. After reading both the article you mention and his, it sounds to me like congressmen LaTourette and others are more concerned about the wishes of large financial institutions than protecting average consumers. The article you mentioned says this:
For their part, financial institutions tend to dislike credit freezes because such measures serve as an impediment to easy plastic and impulse purchases (such as expensively financed new cars).
What I find particularly troubling about the issue of identity theft is the question of "Why is the burden of proof always on the average consumer?" Identity theft victims can spend months trying to convince angry creditors that they really never did open those new charge charge card accounts. Shouldn't it be the financial instition's problem for failing to properly verify the identity of the person they granted credit to? The fact that an applicant knows a few basic facts such as a social security number and a mother's maiden name does not even begin to prove that they are who the say they are. If congressmen LaTourette and others don't like credit freeze laws then they should find some other methods of protecting identity theft victims before eliminating those laws. Congress seems more concerned about the interests of big business lobbyists and their campaign contributions than about identity theft victims.
Perhaps I am mistaken but, personally, I do not believe that my purchasing decisons have ever been greatly influenced by all those advertisements which emphasize style, emotional needs and brand recognition over substance. I when I buy groceries, I read the labels and avoid anything that has the word hydrogenated in it, because I try to avoid transfats (which recent research has shown is even worse than saturated fats). I also check the label for details such as saturated fat and calories. I then compare similar items on the shelf for the price per ounce. I only purchase eggs them from the health food store and look for a label which says things like "free range" and "no hormones" partially becuase I belive "free range" is a more humane way to range chickens.
When purchasing a car or major appliance, I go to the library and check to see what consumer reports magazine has to say. When purchasing a computer or computer periperal I check a computer magazine and then go on-line and check to see if the product is compatible with Linux.
During election time I would never vote for a candidate on what was said in a campaing ad based on a few slogans and misleading one-sided brief sound bites. I always try to read up on the issues and canditates to at least some extent to make a proper informed decision or else I don't vote at all. To me it seem that it would be better to not vote at all than to base my vote on the emotional appeals and missleading statement found in televison ads.
So anyway, it amazes me to think that conventional advertising must work as well as it does. Does it acutally work equally well on all of us? Do we all make our purchasing decisons based on emotional nonsense? It is amazing how uninformative and usless most advertising is. By the way, I am not acutally, sure what this new "viral advertising" technique would be like
I once had some mild sciatica which was partially caused by my chair. I am tall in my upper body but somewhat short legged. Having the upper body of a tall person means that many chairs do not have a high enough back for my upper back. On my old chair, if I sat up straight, relaxed and sat back there was nothing to support the upper half of my body. So I would slump down into the chair far enough to get some back support for my upper back. I would do that for several hours per day in front of my computer. Eventually, I started getting tingling in portions of my lower ankles and feet.
My doctor told me that my tingling exactly followed the path of the sciatic nerve in each foot. He suggested that the nerve was nost likely being pinched in my lower back although he was slightly surpised that I did not have any pain in my lower back. He prescribed some stretching exercises which he said should loosen up my lower back enough to stop the nerve from being pinched. That plus getting a new chair totally solved the problem. Experimenting on my own I could soon tell that both my posture in the chair and the stretching exercises were both factors that could be manipulated to make the problem go away.
This may be slightly off topic but here is another ergonomic problem for people with tall upper bodies. It is the lower location of the rear view mirrors on almost all cars made in the last decade or so. On almost all cars now the mirror is low enough to create a large blind spot in my forward field of veiw. It is annoying to not be able to see pedestrians along the right hand side of the road without having to keep bending or stretching to look under or over the rear view mirror. That is not a problem with my old full size pickup or with old cars with I have driven which were manufactured back in the 1960's or 1970's. Their rear view mirrors were mounted up slightly above my forwared field of vew. But, nearly all newer cars have that problem. I once rented a car at a rental place and tried several different models of their largest cars and even with their help we could not find a way to adjust the seats in a way that would solve that problem.
I was recently driving someone elses mini-pickup in a construction zone. I was going along at about 15 MPH and suddenly noticed some boots barely visible under my rear view mirror and a helmet just barely visible above the top of the rear view mirror. I leaned down and looked under my rear view mirror and noticed a short little Mexican construction worker holding a stop sign about 20 feet ahead of me. I almost didn't see him. Have other tall people noticed a rear-view mirror problem on newer cars? Do people in wheel chairs know that tall people in newer cars may not be able to see them at all? I avoid that problem by driving my old early 1990's full size pickup which has the rear view mirror properly mounted up high for a clear forward field of view. Sorry about getting on a slightly off-topic ergonomics subject. Between chairs, cars and having slightly non-standard shaped feet which don't fit most shoes, I feel like a square peg in a round hole in this world.
I knew a lady who once converted her Ferrari into an electric car. She used to charge up her electric Ferrari every day from the photovotaic panels on the roof of her home. She said she has the largest array of photovotaic panels of any house in the country, it covers a large portion of her roof. At the time I knew her, she no longer had the electric Ferrari (or any other electric car). Most of the time, her electric meter runs backwards and she is selling her unused excess electricity back to the power company.
She is somewhat wealty and could afford to have a huge array of photovotaic pannels. If prices eventually come down for photovotaic perhaps someday more people will be able to do that. She also has one or mere very large deep cycle batteries for her house. Of course presumably the electic Ferrari had its own batteries. I would probably be more in the electric motor scooter price range, not the electric Ferrari price range, like her.
She seemed to me to be nice but perhaps slightly eccentric person (although I don't really know her too well). She lives on a small ranch in Arizona with her own private dirt airstrip in the front yard. She has a large ham radio tower next to her house. She raises her own chickens and on occaision has sat on the back porch doing target practice. Last I heard she was thinking about eventually getting another electric car. She met someone and and got married a few years ago. Her house is totally solar with photovotiac panels, a solar hot water heater, and solar pannels for heating the house.
I also once had a conversation with a guy who had driven up from 100 miles away with his electric car and was looking for somewhere to recharge it before driving home. A found a nearby RV park which allowed him to park on a trailer space while plugging into the 50 Amp outlet and rechaging it for 10 cents per KWH or whatever they charged him.
I forgot to meniton the book Linux Multimedia Hacks. In chapter 4 it mentions building a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). I have a copy of the book but haven't read it yet.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF) also has a page about building your own PVR for HDTV. I don't know if you are iterested in recording HDTV with a PVR but, if so, pcHDTV is one of the two only companies that makes a Linux HDTV video capture card. But, I am not sure if an HDTV video capture card is actually something you would want or not.
There are several free Linux software projects which might or might not what you are looking for. The first thing that comes to mind is something called ZoneMinder which, if I am not mistaken, is a Linux home security sytem which uses remote wireless Internet cameras.
Then there is also the well known Myth TV project which among other things is mainly used by people who bouild their own Personal Video Recorders(PVR). Myth TV supports both HDTV, NTFS and possbly also some other video broadcast standards.
A third possiblility that comes to mind is VLC which is a cross-platform media player and streaming server.
And then there are various other video related programs for Linux such as TvTime the televison application, or MPlayer the movie player. Concievably even something like the Ekiga (formerly known as GnomeNetMeeting) might be relevant. Ekiga supports Full-Screen Videoconferencing. Ekiga supports Video4Linux and Firewire Cameras Support through plugins.
I have not taken the time to try to read what you had to say carefully enough to know for sure what your needs are, these is just what quickly came to mind. It may or may not be what you are looking for. I have used Linux as the desktop operating system for my two home computers for the last 6 years. I have never actually tried out most of the software that I mentions. The fun part of using Linux is that there are hundreds of great free Linux programs to download and tryout. A person could spend years trying out all the free Linux software.
Many Linux video projects seem to be built building block fashion, using other previously written free Linux software, as dependencies. In many cases there are also various other free video projects which are sometimes just user friendly front ends for other free video software. I could not even begin to list all of those free Linux software projects for video and other things.
By the way, Linux has never had virus problems but, even so, there are free anti-virus programs available for Linux. The one that I use is Clam Anti-virus. There are also several good free firewalls avilable for Linux which allow you to control which IP ports are open or closed. There is one other interesting video project which is interesting but, probably not what you are looking for is the free movie studio in a Linux box.
I hope that something that I mentioned might be usesful. You can then decide if Linux is really what you want or not. I personally like it anyway.
I am also conncected now at 26.4K on dial-up but, am actually quite happy. I live in Arizona and in my neighborhood, everyone is only able to connect at 26.4K with their 56K modems. Qwest does not yet offer DSL in my neighborhood and I don't have cable either. Some of my nearest neighbors actually do have cable and broadband. My Canary WiFi hot-spot detector indicates that several of neighbors seem to have open 802.11b/g wireless connections which are still broadcasting their default SSIDs. But, I have resisted the temptation to get a high gain yagi or parabolic antenna and try connecting for free high-speed Internet access. That would probably would be illegal and I don't need high speed that badly.
There are several tricks that I use to stay happy at this speed. Most browsers such as Firefox offer tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing helps because I can start one page loading while I am still finishing reading something in another tab. Until recently, IE didn't offer tabbed browsing which made it far inferior on a slow dial-up connection. However, when using tabbed browsing I always watch out for pages that keep reloading on their own and close those web pages as soon as I am through reading them.
I use Linux, on one of my two computers by the way. It is my main desktop computer. I frequently find interesting new programs for Linux that I want to download. There are hundreds of great free Linux programs waiting to be downloaded. Some of them are 10Mb or more in size which means about an hour or more of downloading. No problem, I just start them downloading just before I go to sleep or go to work. I then set crontab to automatically disconect me after what I calculate should be more than enough time to finish the download. I have occasionally had the computer downloading 80Mb or more files while I was sleeping.
There are several websites that will send the latest Linux CDs for several dollars each, so I don't need to download the free 600 or 700 Mb disk images. Another alternative for downloading an occasional large file is to take my laptop over to a resteraunt in town that has a free WiFi hotspot.
I really don't understand why some people say we all need DSL or broadband. I hope it isn't because of all the porn or illegal MP3s they are downloading. My 26.4K connection seems fine. Earlier today, a Qwest employee metioned some new upgrades going on in my neighborhood and suggested that DSL might possibly be available soon. If that happens, I might actually go ahead and upgrade just so that my telephone line wont be busy so much of the time.
It is possible to run some versions of Internet Explorer under Linux. The Codeweavers CrossOver Office version of Wine can run IE 6.0 under Linux.
Some Linux users also do use Codeweaver's CrossOver Office to Word 2000 under Linux or Excel 2000 under Linux. CrossOver Office is a slightly enhanced version of Wine with a more user friendly front end.
As a desktop Linux user, I have never had to worry about viruses, worms or most spyware. I can open my email without the fear of Active-X extensions, attachments, and viruses that most Windows users have. Of course, I do use one of the several free firewalls available for Linux. I don't run unnecessary services which a desktop user would not need and regularly check for security updates. Linux is not perfect, but it is much less vulneable to most of these problems.
During the summer, when it is 110 degrees F. outside here in Arizona, I would want a white car or truck because it best reflects heat. During the winter, I would prefer beige because dirt does not show up as well on beige paint. When humidity is extremely high I would like the car to be yellow or lime/yellow so that it could best be seen in fog, rain or snow. Surprisingly, red is hard to see at night or in fog and that is why so many fire trucks are now yellow or lime colored in recent years. It used to be that all fire trucks were red before they realized that red was so hard to see red at night or in fog.
At night I would prefer white, yellow or lime/yellow which shows up best at night. Perhaps they could also make their paint change color at night by detecting darkness by responding to the lack of ultraviolet light at night. At no time would I ever want a grey car because they are the same color as asphalt and it is harder to see them coming. Do people that drive grey cars ever notice a problem with people pulling out right in front of them?
Someone else has already commented on the problem of police looking for a certain car and not not knowing what color car to look for. Another person has also commented on the fact that some portions of the car such as the engine compartment would be warmer and be a different temperature. Under certain conditions we would end up with odd two tone patterns. That might be OK.
The paint has been peeling off of my 4WD truck in recent years. Please have this product available in time to be used when I have my truck repainted. At the moment the bare siver steel portions don't look too bad and in the Arizona climate bare steel does not rust even after several years of exposure on the road.
It is actually possible to run IE under Linux, at least the the Codeweavers CrossoverOffice version of Wine. It really is possible to have a big "E" on your Linux desktop. Of course there are actually better browsers available for Linux. I would not really want to do that but here is info:
I don't have any idea if that particular trojan would run on IE under Wine in Linux. But, earlier this year someone tried to make some viruses to run under Wine. He wasn't very sucessful at that. Not a single virus was able to send email and propagate itself. Here is his article about tring to run viruses under Wine on Linux:
I don't actually visit porn sites very often but have occasionally done that over the years while using Linux. I remember trying to download a few photos once and two of the supposed photos actually ended in.jpg.exe. I was glad that I was not running under Windows and IE at the time. Most likely, they were targeting their Windows using visitors with some kind of trojan, spyware or browser hijacker. Fortunately, Linux browsers do not automatically try to run Windows.EXE files under Wine. Does Windows still allow ActiveX controls and VBScript to enable Windows machines to be taken over automatically? Linux browsers do not support ActiveX and VBScript and they do not allow things like that to happen automatically. Most Linux users also do not run as "root" with administrative priveleges most of the time like most Windows users do on their home computers. Not running as "root" adds additional protection.
The moral of the story is, if you want to visit porn sites, don't do it while running Windows and IE. Use a Mac or Linux for that purpose instead. Visiting porn sites is like the Internet equivalent of a bad neighborhood.
Oh yes, I remember how I used to absolutely hate that steady high-pitched noise that came from TVs. I had to put up with that when watching TV back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Once I got into my 40s and 50s I stopped noticing the TV noise. Did I become deaf at that frequency or do TVs no longer make that noise? When I was younger, I would complain to my parents or other people about the noise but they couldn't hear it.
Didn't any of the television manufacturers ever care? What about modern HDTVs with Digital Dolby sound? What do they sound like? Have they fixed the high-pitched noise problem yet? Now that I am in my 50s, I can't tell if TVs still produce that steady annoying high-pitched TV noise or not.
Problems such as 911 and avian flue have been used as excuse for giving up much of our privacy. Are we heading towards a future much like the book "1984"? What would someone like Hitler have done with RFID technology? No one would have been able to blend into the background and hide from him.
There is a "loss of privacy" pattern in recent years. An example is the plans to use RFID tags in most consumer products. Wallmart and various other companies as well as the U.S. military and federal government agencies have been pushing for increased use of RFID tags. There are plans to use inexpensive RFID tags in every item that we buy. The RFID tags would have a unique serial number for each and every single item sold. The passive type of RFID tag does not use a battery and would continue working for many years afterwards. It is mainly intended for inventory control. In a few years we will quite likely be wearing shoes and clothing which have hidden RFID tags which can be read from several feet away by anyone. We will also quite likely have RFID tags in items in our wallet such as our drivers license, charge cards, shoppers discount cards, and passports. There are also proposals for RFID tags in our tires, license plates and possible requirements to be embeded elsewhere in our cars. There has even been a proposal to embed RFID tags in postage stamps in the U.S. I don't know the details but, perhaps tracking all our mail would would be intended as a way to protect us from terrorists who send us packages with explosives or letters with Anthrax.
Many cars in the Houston area have toll passes hanging from their mirrors which have active RFID tags. Houston has over two hundred miles of freeways with "Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) stations every five miles along the road. Big brother is watching.
I won't go into all the various privacy issues associated with RFID tags. But, if anyone is interested, the entire first chapter of a "Spychip" book is avialable online from the publisher at http://www.lfb.com/index.php?stocknumber=PV9017. There is also a RFID spychips organization at http://www.spychips.com.
People are already tring to figure out how to deactivate RFID tags by microwaving them, slicing them or zapping them with static electricity. If RFID tags ever become common I will search out the few stores that still sell RFID tag free items. Should I be less paranoid and be more trusting and less suspicious of my government?
A Sears store in Scottsdale Arizona back about 1972 had an unbearably loud noise that no one else noticed. It was loudest in the center of the store near the escalators. I went up to a salesman at the counter and complained about the loud noise. He said "what noise?" He refused to believe that the loud noise existed. The noise went on for about two years at that Sears store. Los Arcos mall and the Sears store no longer exist now. I never encountered anyone else who had noticed the noise. I also ran into that same very loud high-pitched noise a library somewhere. What was that noise?
We should all take better care of our hearing to avoid hearing loss. Several years ago a few friends persuaded me to go dancing at a local bar. It had unbearably loud music and I wished I had remembered to bring my ear plugs. Afterwards, it took about three weeks for my hearing to return to normal. All of us thought the music was unusually loud but I was the only one that had experienced hearing problems for several weeks afterwards.
What about loud movie theatres? Why are they frequently so loud? I usually bring ear plugs to movie theaters just in case I need them.
I was recently walking around my neighborhood with my cousin and her husband. It was during the time of the year that the cicadia insects are so loud. I commented to my cousin about the loud noise and she said that her husband could not hear the noise. He is a construction worker. Cicadias are amazingly loud and even most old people can hear.
Back in the 1970s, I worked for a few months at a styrofoam cup factory in which most of the equipment used loud compressed air. May ears would always ring for several hours afterwards. I was one of the few people in the plant who spoke English. Almost no one in the plant wore ear plugs. If I had stayed longer at that job, I wonder how much hearing loss I would have had?
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I assume that an ad-supported version of Windows would most likely involve some type of tracking and loss of privacy. Perhaps some type of spyware would monitor your browsing and searching habits so that advertisers could send you targeted advertising. Is that how it would work?
I already use a free OS, I use Linux. I do not need an ad-supported version of Windows. I like the fact that most common spyware won't run on Linux. Viruses and worms won't either for that matter. I value my privacy and don't want more spyware or ads.
Despite being free and having no ad-revenues, Linux has done surprisingly well at getting better every year. If fact many of the new "innovative" features Microsoft has been bragging about for Vista are already available for Linux. Linux even has some of the features that were cut from Vista so that it would be released on time. Vista will have "Instant Search" while Linux already has the Beagle desktop search program. Vista will have its new "Aero" graphical interface while some versions of Linux already have XGL graphics. Instead of everyone in Windows usually being an administrator, Vista will have more of a Unix/Linux style security. Linux has always done it that way. Vista will have desktop widgets, Linux already has SuperKarama. I could go on.
I admit there actually are various pros and cons in the Windows vs. Linux argument, but my point is that, there already is a good free operating system that is doing just fine without having to resort to ad-supported revenues. No, never in a million years for me.
According to a recent newspaper article, the new voting machines that will be used where I live will also print out paper stubs. I don't recall all the details, but the voter briefly gets to view the stub for accurary before it is stored somewhere. The paper stubs counld be used to do a recount. I am not sure what company makes those machines, but I doubt that it is Diebold.
Without a paper stub and the possibility of a recount, I would never trust a closed-source operating system on proprietary harware whose inner workings are understood by only a few political insiders and company employees. That is expecially true with Diebold and their history of security flaws.
Several years ago copies of what was allegedly the software used on Diebold voting machines was found on an unsecure sever and posted on the Internet? The software was examined and various outrageous securtity flaws and a back door was also found. Various websites at the time, suggested that you download the software and then follow their instructions to see for yourself how easy it was to use the back door to edit totals in an undetectable way. The software and the instructions quickly appeared and dissappeared for short periods of time from various websites around the world as lawyers went about getting websites to remove the illegal material. How many people here remember that incident? Is some version of that same software still being used on Diebold machines today or not? They also posted what allegedly were internal Diebold email messages from employees discussing various security problems but did not seem concerned about the problems.
BlackBoxVoting.org has a free online book in PDF form. If I remember correctly, later versions of their book had several new chapters on that incident. I haven't stayed up on the issue or with what that organization is doing or what the latest voting machines are like..
All voting machines should be required to print out stubs. Either that or use older methods (possibly with the hanging chads problem and all). Ironically, Diebold's ATMs used at banks print out receipts, so they already have the technology. They would just need to use that existing technology and have the receipts or stubs put in a ballet box for recounting purposes.
I am in the green area on your map and have not yet been able to get high-speed Internet access. I live slightly beyond the end of the local cable-TV system. DSL is not yet available in my neighborhood either. The last time I checked, a hill blocked my being able to receive wireless Internet from a local internet provider at 256K - 1MB speeds. I could get a Starband satellite dish for Internet but that is significantly more than I am willing to pay. It is still dial-up only here.
The telephone lines in my neighborhood are only good for 26.4K. We don't yet have 28.8K, 32K or 56K. A QWest repairman told me that, unoffically, he had heard that sometime in the next year our neighborhood will be upgraded and DSL will then be available.
I am in Arizona, but am not out in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside I can see a fancy gated community and their golf course nearby. I can also see an airport, a hospital, a large hotel, a casino and a private university. This is not somewhere out in the boondocks.
Don't forget the RFID tagged world that we are heading into. Companies such as Wall-Mart and several government agencies have been pushing hard to add RFID spychips to everything that we purchase. Soon we will be wearing RFID tagged clothing and shoes. Our wallets will have RFID tags in our charge cards and passports. We will be driving around in cars with RFID tags in the tires and elsewhere.
Each and every RFID tag will have a unique serial number and we will secretly be scanned when entering stores. Upon checking out our RFID tagged items we will show them our shoppers discount card and pay by charge card where our personal information will be updated in various computer databases. Who knows what personal information will then eventually be shared with credit agencies, advertisers and the governemnt.
As we drive around the country hidden scanners in highways will secretly log our movements at key points. And of course all the young people proudly carry their cell phones everywhere. I have heard that cell phones regularly transmit which cell tower they are closest to even when they are turned off. Only removing the battery or perhaps placing it in a Faraday cage would stop that.
If I understand correctly the USDA wants animal ID for all animals in micro-farms for every sheep, chicken, goat or other animal. That would most likely involve using RFID Tags to track your food. Perhaps they are afraid that that someone could actually buy their food from somewhere in cash without big brother having a record. There is an organization called NoNAIS that is opposed to those proposed rules.
Marketing researchers and the police will be able to inventory the contents of our garbage cans with hand held scanners without even opening the lid.
Many of us even have pets which have been RFID tagged in case they get lost. Some (but not all) Christians believe that RFID chips or something similar implanted into the back of the hands or our foreheads will be the "mark of the beast" described in the Bible. Even if it doesn't go that far, RFID sypchips could play a major role in bringing us into a "1984" like world. Add RFID technology to what other people have said and I think we seriously could be heading towards the future that George Orwell warned us about in the book "1984". Perhaps I should take my tin foil hat off now and just relax, this is still America after all.I live in Arizona and dial-up is all that is available where I live. Neither cable or DSL from the phone company is available here. The telephone lines in my neighborhood are only good for 26.4K, so here I am right now, on my 2.4 GHz computer, with a 56K modem, connected with a 26.4K dial-up connection.
I live in a smaller city, up in the mountains in Arizona, but I am not way out in the middle of nowhere. When I look outside, not too far away, I can see a small airport, a private university, a hospital, a golf course, a gated community, an Indian casino, a hotel and hundreds of homes. Lately I have seen the TV commercials from QWest which make disparaging comments about dial-up and suggest getting inexpensive QWest DSL instead. So I called them and they told me that DSL is not available where I live. Unofficially, a QWest repairman recently told me that he had heard that my neighborhood is scheduled to be upgraded by adding a switch nearby sometime within the next year. Lately, someone is digging a 2 mile long ditch nearby and laying plastic conduit. QWest telephone trucks have occasionally been parked along the ditch so I hope that means that they are finally upgrading our neighborhood.
A local Internet provider recently placed an antenna on another hill which might possibly be accessible from where I live and would offer a reasonably high-speed wireless Internet connection at an acceptable price. A more expensive satellite connection from Starband is another option but I don't really want anything too expensive. It's not like 26.4K dial-up is really that bad if you don't have sypware, if you block as many ads as possible, and mostly visit less graphics intense websites such as Slashdot. If I need to download a large file I have it download most of the night while I am asleep or else take a laptop over to a small Cafe which has free WiFi.
There is a new article on Groklaw which says that the facts in the Forbes article are incorrect. The Groklaw article says:
First, SCO has not filed a motion for sanctions for spoliation. That's the way to get an issue regarding missing evidence properly before a judge. It has not happened. I checked Pacer.
Second, SCO didn't file any motions in March of 2006, sealed or otherwise, despite Forbes "reporting" that SCO filed the allegations as part of a sealed motion that month ("Hatch, SCO's attorney, says SCO learned about the destruction of code when it took depositions from IBM programmers. This is the first time SCO has made the allegation in public, though Hatch says the claim was part of a motion SCO filed in March 2006, which has remained sealed.").
Well, I don't know who got it wrong, Hatch or Forbes, but that's just not true. I note for the record that it was not Boies Schiller who did the interview.
The Groklaw webpage also says:
Those are two facts that any reporter could have and should have checked prior to publishing a story implying either was true. They could have just looked on the Docket on Pacer. If they don't know how, they could have asked me. Just because you get a call from SCO, it doesn't mean you publish as is, without even checking the facts. If you don't want to check Pacer, just look on the IBM Timeline page Groklaw provides as an educational service to the public, and look for yourself. This is all just a media event, as far as I can see, in SCO's primary case, the one it is trying in the court of public opinion.
Back in 2003 SCO held a media event called the SCO forum where then CEO Darl McBride said this:
"They have found already a mountain of code," he said. "The DNA of Linux is coming from Unix."
That and this next quote came from a CNET News article from August 2003 which also goes on to describe some of what Chris Sontag, head of the company's SCOsource effort had to say:
"I can understand one or two lines being in common," said Sontag, who is charged with maintaining the company's intellectual property rights surrounding Unix. "But when you're talking about this level of variables being the same...the comment sections all being the same, it's problematic."
Sontag then showed, in a series of slides, Linux code that he claimed has been literally copied from Unix. He said numerous comments, unusual spellings and typographical errors had also been copied directly into Linux.
So, if any of that was really ever true, then why doesn't SCO just show the judge the mountain of evidence which they angrily told the media about back in mid-2003? Instead, according to the Forbes article, they are now complaining that "code deletion is one reason why the Lindon, Utah, software maker has been unable to comply with a demand that it produce examples of allegedly stolen code."
"It's kind of hard for us to do that," says Brent Hatch, an attorney with Hatch, James & Dodge in Salt Lake City, "because we don't have it. It was destroyed before it could be given to us."
You're right about it being possible to run Internet Explorer under wine. I had not heard of Es4Linux, but I had heard of running Internet Explorer under Linux with the help of "CrossOver Office". It is a slightly enhanced version of Wine made by CodeWeavers. The Codeweavers website mentions running Internet Explorer 6.0 under Linux. Will that allow me to run Windows spyware just like Windows users do? Probably not, but for the last few years I have used the "CodeWeavers CrossOver Office" version of Wine to run MS Office 2000 under Linux although I mostly use the Linux version of Open Office instead of MS Office.
I use a similar ad blocking hosts file on both my Linux computer and on the Windows XP computer. I have been using "Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file" for several years now on both computers. Like the modified hosts file you mentioned, Mike's modified hosts file also diverts the URLs for most ad servers to the 127.0.0.1 loop-back address that all computers have. His webpage has instructions for using his modified hosts file in either Windows, MAC, Linux and Unix. He regularly comes out with updated versions of his hosts file.
You also mention using a more secure operating system, I use Linux instead of Windows most of the time at home. Of course I don't use Internet Explorer on the Linux computer since it isn't even avilable for Linux and would not want to anyway. I use the Linux version of Firefox instead. Spyware, viruses and worms are almost unheard of under non-Microsoft operating systems such as Linux or Mac OS X.
A 26.4K Internet connection is all that is available in my neighborhood. The Internet looks the same on my relatively new AMD 64 3800+ computer as it does on my old 266 MHz Pentium II computer. I live in a small city in Arizona and QWest is the local telephone company. On TV every evening lately I see the QWest commercial that makes disparaging comments about dial-up Internet. The commercial says to get inexpensive DSL high-speed Internet access instead. Whenever I call them they always tell me that DSL is not available where I live. They haven't even been willing to upgrade the local telephone lines so that 56k or 28.8 would be available to me or my neighbors. I don't have cable where I live either.
So anyway I don't have any reason to want to upgrade my computer.
As a Linux user, it is really nice not having to worry about spyware or even worms or viruses. I am not really an expert or sure exactly why only Windows users have those problems. Perhaps Linux and Mac users do not have enough market share to be worth targeting. As far as the lack viruses and worms for Linux and Mac OS X, there might be other reasons such as IE's support for Active X and the fact that most Windows users at home don't use a separate administrative account.
I wonder if perhaps the genetic diversity of the software on most Linux computers might also make it somewhat harder to write spyware (and also viruses) that work properly on all computers. Linux users use a variety of different email programs, browsers, kernels and versions of Linux. By comparison Windows is an in-bred monoculture with most users using outlook and IE and the same identical kernel.
Perhaps they just feel we aren't worth bothering with. I suppose that someone could theoretically write Linux spyware, then make it available to be downloaded in DEB, RPM, TGZ, and also source code formats. Then they could try to persuade me to download and install their spyware in whichever package format is appropriate for the version of Linux that I use. Next, I would probably be asked for my root password so their spyware could be properly installed with the necessary privileges. Yes, I suppose that could happen.
But anyway, I also use a modified hosts file to divert most known advertising related URL's to the 127.0.0.1 loop-back address on my computer. I use Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file which can be used with either Windows, Linux, Unix or Mac OSX. Many web pages have some background communication going to those advertising related URL's, much of which can be blocked by a modified hosts file. I hope that it includes the latest URL's for Direct Revenue and most similar spyware companies. I'm not sure, but I update the hosts file regularly anyway.
One last defensive trick that I use is, on the Thunderbird email program, I chose the option to not automatically display remote images unless they come from someone that is in my address book. Allowing those images to be displayed would require the images to be download from some remote IP address and (I suppose) that might also allow them to detect my IP address and be able to tell that I received their spam. Most email programs (even Outlook) has similar options.
The article could have at least mentioned the "we" don't all have a problem with spyware
DOS is one of several operating systems that I have installed and can boot-up into on my AMD Athlon 64 3800+ computer. I actually have PC-DOS 2000 (instead of FreeDOS) installed on the first partition of my first harddrive, it is a FAT-16 partition. When booting up, a menu appears that allows me to choose whether to boot up into Windows 2000, PC-DOS 2000. or one of several different versions of Linux. PC-DOS 2000 was a minor Y2K upgrade of the Last version of DOS that IBM had released. As you may recall, Microsoft and IBM each had their own versions of DOS since back in the 1980's Surprisingly, my AMD Athlon 64 can run more than just 64-bit software. I don't recall if DOS is 16-bit software or what, but it runs just fine on my AMD Athon 64.
The obvious question is why would anyone want to run DOS on a modern computer? Well, I have fond memories of tinkering with batch files, DOS commands and old DOS games back in the late 1980's and early 1990s. Every once in a while, I like to re-experience the retro experience of what it was like to run DOS. I do not boot-up into DOS very often, but I am glad that I can choose to boot up into DOS once in a while when I want to. Of course Linux, Windows or almost any other modern OS is actually better on a modern desktop computer for everyday use.
I actually have a mixture of Free-DOS and PC-DOS 2000 installed on the fat-16 partition. If I remember correctly, I did that by installing FreeDOS first and then later installing PC-DOS 2000 on top of it. Afterwards, I then manually edited the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to remove any wierdness that resulted from istalling both that way. I had a slight preference for the PC-DOS 2000 but doing it that way gave me all the extra free software and some Linux/Unix like commands that come with the FreeDOS. Am I the only one out there who occasionally boots his AMD Athlon 64 3800+ up into DOS?
There are actually several choices for running old DOS programs. One choice is Free-DOS. Another choice is DR-DOS/OpenDOS which, if I understand correctly, is a commercial product in which the source code of the kernel has been under an Open Source license. Another alternative is to run the free DOSBox emulator under Windows or Linux. Using DOSBox I have been able to run old DOS games such as "Commader Keen" under Linux and even managed to get my USB joystick and modern soundcard to work with it. Yet another option is to use VMWare to create a virtual machine for FreeDOS and run it in a virtual machine under either Linux or Windows. Even though their are other alternatives, I am glad to see that the FreeDOS project is still alive and about to release version 1.0.
Another critic of that proposed law is Consumer advocate Clark Howard. His article is here:
Contact your reps over credit freezes
According to his article, 23 states now have credit freeze protection laws. The proposed law in congress would essentially invalidate all of these state laws. After reading both the article you mention and his, it sounds to me like congressmen LaTourette and others are more concerned about the wishes of large financial institutions than protecting average consumers. The article you mentioned says this:
For their part, financial institutions tend to dislike credit freezes because such measures serve as an impediment to easy plastic and impulse purchases (such as expensively financed new cars).
What I find particularly troubling about the issue of identity theft is the question of "Why is the burden of proof always on the average consumer?" Identity theft victims can spend months trying to convince angry creditors that they really never did open those new charge charge card accounts. Shouldn't it be the financial instition's problem for failing to properly verify the identity of the person they granted credit to? The fact that an applicant knows a few basic facts such as a social security number and a mother's maiden name does not even begin to prove that they are who the say they are. If congressmen LaTourette and others don't like credit freeze laws then they should find some other methods of protecting identity theft victims before eliminating those laws. Congress seems more concerned about the interests of big business lobbyists and their campaign contributions than about identity theft victims.
Perhaps I am mistaken but, personally, I do not believe that my purchasing decisons have ever been greatly influenced by all those advertisements which emphasize style, emotional needs and brand recognition over substance. I when I buy groceries, I read the labels and avoid anything that has the word hydrogenated in it, because I try to avoid transfats (which recent research has shown is even worse than saturated fats). I also check the label for details such as saturated fat and calories. I then compare similar items on the shelf for the price per ounce. I only purchase eggs them from the health food store and look for a label which says things like "free range" and "no hormones" partially becuase I belive "free range" is a more humane way to range chickens.
When purchasing a car or major appliance, I go to the library and check to see what consumer reports magazine has to say. When purchasing a computer or computer periperal I check a computer magazine and then go on-line and check to see if the product is compatible with Linux.
During election time I would never vote for a candidate on what was said in a campaing ad based on a few slogans and misleading one-sided brief sound bites. I always try to read up on the issues and canditates to at least some extent to make a proper informed decision or else I don't vote at all. To me it seem that it would be better to not vote at all than to base my vote on the emotional appeals and missleading statement found in televison ads.
So anyway, it amazes me to think that conventional advertising must work as well as it does. Does it acutally work equally well on all of us? Do we all make our purchasing decisons based on emotional nonsense? It is amazing how uninformative and usless most advertising is. By the way, I am not acutally, sure what this new "viral advertising" technique would be like
I once had some mild sciatica which was partially caused by my chair. I am tall in my upper body but somewhat short legged. Having the upper body of a tall person means that many chairs do not have a high enough back for my upper back. On my old chair, if I sat up straight, relaxed and sat back there was nothing to support the upper half of my body. So I would slump down into the chair far enough to get some back support for my upper back. I would do that for several hours per day in front of my computer. Eventually, I started getting tingling in portions of my lower ankles and feet.
My doctor told me that my tingling exactly followed the path of the sciatic nerve in each foot. He suggested that the nerve was nost likely being pinched in my lower back although he was slightly surpised that I did not have any pain in my lower back. He prescribed some stretching exercises which he said should loosen up my lower back enough to stop the nerve from being pinched. That plus getting a new chair totally solved the problem. Experimenting on my own I could soon tell that both my posture in the chair and the stretching exercises were both factors that could be manipulated to make the problem go away.
This may be slightly off topic but here is another ergonomic problem for people with tall upper bodies. It is the lower location of the rear view mirrors on almost all cars made in the last decade or so. On almost all cars now the mirror is low enough to create a large blind spot in my forward field of veiw. It is annoying to not be able to see pedestrians along the right hand side of the road without having to keep bending or stretching to look under or over the rear view mirror. That is not a problem with my old full size pickup or with old cars with I have driven which were manufactured back in the 1960's or 1970's. Their rear view mirrors were mounted up slightly above my forwared field of vew. But, nearly all newer cars have that problem. I once rented a car at a rental place and tried several different models of their largest cars and even with their help we could not find a way to adjust the seats in a way that would solve that problem.
I was recently driving someone elses mini-pickup in a construction zone. I was going along at about 15 MPH and suddenly noticed some boots barely visible under my rear view mirror and a helmet just barely visible above the top of the rear view mirror. I leaned down and looked under my rear view mirror and noticed a short little Mexican construction worker holding a stop sign about 20 feet ahead of me. I almost didn't see him. Have other tall people noticed a rear-view mirror problem on newer cars? Do people in wheel chairs know that tall people in newer cars may not be able to see them at all? I avoid that problem by driving my old early 1990's full size pickup which has the rear view mirror properly mounted up high for a clear forward field of view. Sorry about getting on a slightly off-topic ergonomics subject. Between chairs, cars and having slightly non-standard shaped feet which don't fit most shoes, I feel like a square peg in a round hole in this world.
I knew a lady who once converted her Ferrari into an electric car. She used to charge up her electric Ferrari every day from the photovotaic panels on the roof of her home. She said she has the largest array of photovotaic panels of any house in the country, it covers a large portion of her roof. At the time I knew her, she no longer had the electric Ferrari (or any other electric car). Most of the time, her electric meter runs backwards and she is selling her unused excess electricity back to the power company.
She is somewhat wealty and could afford to have a huge array of photovotaic pannels. If prices eventually come down for photovotaic perhaps someday more people will be able to do that. She also has one or mere very large deep cycle batteries for her house. Of course presumably the electic Ferrari had its own batteries. I would probably be more in the electric motor scooter price range, not the electric Ferrari price range, like her.
She seemed to me to be nice but perhaps slightly eccentric person (although I don't really know her too well). She lives on a small ranch in Arizona with her own private dirt airstrip in the front yard. She has a large ham radio tower next to her house. She raises her own chickens and on occaision has sat on the back porch doing target practice. Last I heard she was thinking about eventually getting another electric car. She met someone and and got married a few years ago. Her house is totally solar with photovotiac panels, a solar hot water heater, and solar pannels for heating the house.
I also once had a conversation with a guy who had driven up from 100 miles away with his electric car and was looking for somewhere to recharge it before driving home. A found a nearby RV park which allowed him to park on a trailer space while plugging into the 50 Amp outlet and rechaging it for 10 cents per KWH or whatever they charged him.
I forgot to meniton the book Linux Multimedia Hacks. In chapter 4 it mentions building a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). I have a copy of the book but haven't read it yet.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation(EFF) also has a page about building your own PVR for HDTV. I don't know if you are iterested in recording HDTV with a PVR but, if so, pcHDTV is one of the two only companies that makes a Linux HDTV video capture card. But, I am not sure if an HDTV video capture card is actually something you would want or not.
There are several free Linux software projects which might or might not what you are looking for. The first thing that comes to mind is something called ZoneMinder which, if I am not mistaken, is a Linux home security sytem which uses remote wireless Internet cameras.
Then there is also the well known Myth TV project which among other things is mainly used by people who bouild their own Personal Video Recorders(PVR). Myth TV supports both HDTV, NTFS and possbly also some other video broadcast standards.
A third possiblility that comes to mind is VLC which is a cross-platform media player and streaming server.
And then there are various other video related programs for Linux such as TvTime the televison application, or MPlayer the movie player. Concievably even something like the Ekiga (formerly known as GnomeNetMeeting) might be relevant. Ekiga supports Full-Screen Videoconferencing. Ekiga supports Video4Linux and Firewire Cameras Support through plugins.
I have not taken the time to try to read what you had to say carefully enough to know for sure what your needs are, these is just what quickly came to mind. It may or may not be what you are looking for. I have used Linux as the desktop operating system for my two home computers for the last 6 years. I have never actually tried out most of the software that I mentions. The fun part of using Linux is that there are hundreds of great free Linux programs to download and tryout. A person could spend years trying out all the free Linux software.Many Linux video projects seem to be built building block fashion, using other previously written free Linux software, as dependencies. In many cases there are also various other free video projects which are sometimes just user friendly front ends for other free video software. I could not even begin to list all of those free Linux software projects for video and other things.
By the way, Linux has never had virus problems but, even so, there are free anti-virus programs available for Linux. The one that I use is Clam Anti-virus. There are also several good free firewalls avilable for Linux which allow you to control which IP ports are open or closed. There is one other interesting video project which is interesting but, probably not what you are looking for is the free movie studio in a Linux box.
I hope that something that I mentioned might be usesful. You can then decide if Linux is really what you want or not. I personally like it anyway.
I am also conncected now at 26.4K on dial-up but, am actually quite happy. I live in Arizona and in my neighborhood, everyone is only able to connect at 26.4K with their 56K modems. Qwest does not yet offer DSL in my neighborhood and I don't have cable either. Some of my nearest neighbors actually do have cable and broadband. My Canary WiFi hot-spot detector indicates that several of neighbors seem to have open 802.11b/g wireless connections which are still broadcasting their default SSIDs. But, I have resisted the temptation to get a high gain yagi or parabolic antenna and try connecting for free high-speed Internet access. That would probably would be illegal and I don't need high speed that badly.
There are several tricks that I use to stay happy at this speed. Most browsers such as Firefox offer tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing helps because I can start one page loading while I am still finishing reading something in another tab. Until recently, IE didn't offer tabbed browsing which made it far inferior on a slow dial-up connection. However, when using tabbed browsing I always watch out for pages that keep reloading on their own and close those web pages as soon as I am through reading them.
I use Linux, on one of my two computers by the way. It is my main desktop computer. I frequently find interesting new programs for Linux that I want to download. There are hundreds of great free Linux programs waiting to be downloaded. Some of them are 10Mb or more in size which means about an hour or more of downloading. No problem, I just start them downloading just before I go to sleep or go to work. I then set crontab to automatically disconect me after what I calculate should be more than enough time to finish the download. I have occasionally had the computer downloading 80Mb or more files while I was sleeping.
There are several websites that will send the latest Linux CDs for several dollars each, so I don't need to download the free 600 or 700 Mb disk images. Another alternative for downloading an occasional large file is to take my laptop over to a resteraunt in town that has a free WiFi hotspot.
I really don't understand why some people say we all need DSL or broadband. I hope it isn't because of all the porn or illegal MP3s they are downloading. My 26.4K connection seems fine. Earlier today, a Qwest employee metioned some new upgrades going on in my neighborhood and suggested that DSL might possibly be available soon. If that happens, I might actually go ahead and upgrade just so that my telephone line wont be busy so much of the time.
Here is a link about an unsecessful attempt to run five Windows viruses under Linux:
Running Windows viruses with Wine
It is possible to run some versions of Internet Explorer under Linux. The Codeweavers CrossOver Office version of Wine can run IE 6.0 under Linux.
Some Linux users also do use Codeweaver's CrossOver Office to Word 2000 under Linux or Excel 2000 under Linux. CrossOver Office is a slightly enhanced version of Wine with a more user friendly front end.
As a desktop Linux user, I have never had to worry about viruses, worms or most spyware. I can open my email without the fear of Active-X extensions, attachments, and viruses that most Windows users have. Of course, I do use one of the several free firewalls available for Linux. I don't run unnecessary services which a desktop user would not need and regularly check for security updates. Linux is not perfect, but it is much less vulneable to most of these problems.
During the summer, when it is 110 degrees F. outside here in Arizona, I would want a white car or truck because it best reflects heat. During the winter, I would prefer beige because dirt does not show up as well on beige paint. When humidity is extremely high I would like the car to be yellow or lime/yellow so that it could best be seen in fog, rain or snow. Surprisingly, red is hard to see at night or in fog and that is why so many fire trucks are now yellow or lime colored in recent years. It used to be that all fire trucks were red before they realized that red was so hard to see red at night or in fog.
At night I would prefer white, yellow or lime/yellow which shows up best at night. Perhaps they could also make their paint change color at night by detecting darkness by responding to the lack of ultraviolet light at night. At no time would I ever want a grey car because they are the same color as asphalt and it is harder to see them coming. Do people that drive grey cars ever notice a problem with people pulling out right in front of them?
Someone else has already commented on the problem of police looking for a certain car and not not knowing what color car to look for. Another person has also commented on the fact that some portions of the car such as the engine compartment would be warmer and be a different temperature. Under certain conditions we would end up with odd two tone patterns. That might be OK.
The paint has been peeling off of my 4WD truck in recent years. Please have this product available in time to be used when I have my truck repainted. At the moment the bare siver steel portions don't look too bad and in the Arizona climate bare steel does not rust even after several years of exposure on the road.
It is actually possible to run IE under Linux, at least the the Codeweavers CrossoverOffice version of Wine. It really is possible to have a big "E" on your Linux desktop. Of course there are actually better browsers available for Linux. I would not really want to do that but here is info:
Running IE 6.0 under Linux
I don't have any idea if that particular trojan would run on IE under Wine in Linux. But, earlier this year someone tried to make some viruses to run under Wine. He wasn't very sucessful at that. Not a single virus was able to send email and propagate itself. Here is his article about tring to run viruses under Wine on Linux:
Running Windows viruses with Wine
I don't actually visit porn sites very often but have occasionally done that over the years while using Linux. I remember trying to download a few photos once and two of the supposed photos actually ended in .jpg.exe. I was glad that I was not running under Windows and IE at the time. Most likely, they were targeting their Windows using visitors with some kind of trojan, spyware or browser hijacker. Fortunately, Linux browsers do not automatically try to run Windows .EXE files under Wine. Does Windows still allow ActiveX controls and VBScript to enable Windows machines to be taken over automatically? Linux browsers do not support ActiveX and VBScript and they do not allow things like that to happen automatically. Most Linux users also do not run as "root" with administrative priveleges most of the time like most Windows users do on their home computers. Not running as "root" adds additional protection.
The moral of the story is, if you want to visit porn sites, don't do it while running Windows and IE. Use a Mac or Linux for that purpose instead. Visiting porn sites is like the Internet equivalent of a bad neighborhood.
Oh yes, I remember how I used to absolutely hate that steady high-pitched noise that came from TVs. I had to put up with that when watching TV back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Once I got into my 40s and 50s I stopped noticing the TV noise. Did I become deaf at that frequency or do TVs no longer make that noise? When I was younger, I would complain to my parents or other people about the noise but they couldn't hear it.
Didn't any of the television manufacturers ever care? What about modern HDTVs with Digital Dolby sound? What do they sound like? Have they fixed the high-pitched noise problem yet? Now that I am in my 50s, I can't tell if TVs still produce that steady annoying high-pitched TV noise or not.
Problems such as 911 and avian flue have been used as excuse for giving up much of our privacy. Are we heading towards a future much like the book "1984"? What would someone like Hitler have done with RFID technology? No one would have been able to blend into the background and hide from him.
There is a "loss of privacy" pattern in recent years. An example is the plans to use RFID tags in most consumer products. Wallmart and various other companies as well as the U.S. military and federal government agencies have been pushing for increased use of RFID tags. There are plans to use inexpensive RFID tags in every item that we buy. The RFID tags would have a unique serial number for each and every single item sold. The passive type of RFID tag does not use a battery and would continue working for many years afterwards. It is mainly intended for inventory control. In a few years we will quite likely be wearing shoes and clothing which have hidden RFID tags which can be read from several feet away by anyone. We will also quite likely have RFID tags in items in our wallet such as our drivers license, charge cards, shoppers discount cards, and passports. There are also proposals for RFID tags in our tires, license plates and possible requirements to be embeded elsewhere in our cars. There has even been a proposal to embed RFID tags in postage stamps in the U.S. I don't know the details but, perhaps tracking all our mail would would be intended as a way to protect us from terrorists who send us packages with explosives or letters with Anthrax.
Many cars in the Houston area have toll passes hanging from their mirrors which have active RFID tags. Houston has over two hundred miles of freeways with "Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) stations every five miles along the road. Big brother is watching.
I won't go into all the various privacy issues associated with RFID tags. But, if anyone is interested, the entire first chapter of a "Spychip" book is avialable online from the publisher at http://www.lfb.com/index.php?stocknumber=PV9017. There is also a RFID spychips organization at http://www.spychips.com.
People are already tring to figure out how to deactivate RFID tags by microwaving them, slicing them or zapping them with static electricity. If RFID tags ever become common I will search out the few stores that still sell RFID tag free items. Should I be less paranoid and be more trusting and less suspicious of my government?
A Sears store in Scottsdale Arizona back about 1972 had an unbearably loud noise that no one else noticed. It was loudest in the center of the store near the escalators. I went up to a salesman at the counter and complained about the loud noise. He said "what noise?" He refused to believe that the loud noise existed. The noise went on for about two years at that Sears store. Los Arcos mall and the Sears store no longer exist now. I never encountered anyone else who had noticed the noise. I also ran into that same very loud high-pitched noise a library somewhere. What was that noise?
We should all take better care of our hearing to avoid hearing loss. Several years ago a few friends persuaded me to go dancing at a local bar. It had unbearably loud music and I wished I had remembered to bring my ear plugs. Afterwards, it took about three weeks for my hearing to return to normal. All of us thought the music was unusually loud but I was the only one that had experienced hearing problems for several weeks afterwards.
What about loud movie theatres? Why are they frequently so loud? I usually bring ear plugs to movie theaters just in case I need them.
I was recently walking around my neighborhood with my cousin and her husband. It was during the time of the year that the cicadia insects are so loud. I commented to my cousin about the loud noise and she said that her husband could not hear the noise. He is a construction worker. Cicadias are amazingly loud and even most old people can hear.
Back in the 1970s, I worked for a few months at a styrofoam cup factory in which most of the equipment used loud compressed air. May ears would always ring for several hours afterwards. I was one of the few people in the plant who spoke English. Almost no one in the plant wore ear plugs. If I had stayed longer at that job, I wonder how much hearing loss I would have had?