Oh yeah how about grub problems how about other shit. I am fine I spent some time figuring out...other people just dont have that time to debug grub problems.
No grub problems. I wasn't dual booting that box anyway, so it was just a default single OS configuration. Not that MS's loader is trivial to set up for dual booting either...
It's not currently that difficult to set up a Linux system on most hardware.
If anything, it's easier than setting up Windows. Ubuntu takes 1/2 at most to install and comes with office software (OpenOffice) along with lots of other productivity stuff. Not many questions asked during install and no licensing, entry of keys, Web validation or any of that sort of crapola. For the most part, it Just Works.
Oh yeah. That's why people are flocking to Linux on the desktop. So that they can edit each and every individual flat file by hand. Oh sure. That's what I like to do on a Friday night. Why have a life when you can be a slave to your PC?
There's no reason why automated tools to edit flat files can't (and do!) exist. See: YaST. Also, many applications have their own options editors. I'm saying that keeping all of one's eggs in one basket is pathetically stupid.
Your post shows that you have no real understanding of Linux.
Projects like [k]ubuntu will be left in the dust by a distro like suse with MSOffice for Linux. Then, ISVs will start supporting only suse and completely ignore other distros.
Why? OpenOffice and various other free alternatives do all of what the average user needs to do in Office. Yes, VB macros are nice, but they're not used universally. Besides, who's to say that Linux Office will even have macro support - after all, MS is dropping VB macro support for the next release of Office for OS X.
The only advantage that Office may have is the collaboration features of Outlook, and this may be done better by various web-based groupware products in the end (Outlook isn't the most stable product ever invented).
Consolidate 5000 flat files and make a registry-like thing.
That's the most *fucking horrible* idea that I've ever heard. Flat files are actually a *good* thing in many cases, since security on each file can be controlled individually, and all applications aren't dependent on a single non-transparent object that's somewhat easily broken.
If anything, Microsoft tends to overuse the giant opaque database in their software. We don't need more of that, especially not for a desktop OS.
-b.
Re:Evil is limited trick-or-treat times...
on
Halloween Roundup
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· Score: 1
Today, most cities only allow trick-or-treating between 6-8pm....blah.
The fact that towns and cities actually make those laws is a problem. This should be between the parents, the kids, and possibly the people whose houses kids go to (i.e., if you don't want to be disturbed, turn off the front porch light). Overregulation at its worst - the people who pass such laws should be hanged, drawn, quartered and burnt like they did to Guy Fawkes (obligatory Halloween grossness ends).
So you're saying that a feature that 99% of the user base uses with out any problems should be yanked because the 1% of people that actually mount remote shares don't like how it works? Give me a break you fuck.
I didn't say it should be yanked now. I said that it should be improved from what is essentially a beta product. And you're forgetting the business world: some of them would really like to be able to switch to OS X *and* have indexed/searchable network shares. Anything that increases Apple's business market share is ultimately good for Apple.
Agreed. The NeXTSTEP UI is/was much cleaner than Finder. Given a proper desktop where files and folders could be dragged and dropped, it would have been a winner. Unfortunately, Apple was tied to making OS X look somewhat like OS 9 in order to make the transition easier for the n00bs.
I also can't stand spotlight. It is a resource hog and doesn't work well
Also agreed. Not to mention that Spotlight is a screaming c*nt to get to work with networked directories. It fails if you try to get it to search NFS automounted shares unless they're users' home directories. If you manually mount a network share in Terminal, it also craps out. The only way to get a searchable share, at least in 10.4.7 and 10.4.8, it seems, it to mount it through Finder, either via "Go/Connect to Server" or via the Applescript "mount volume..." command. Then you have to run a shell script (as real root, not as an "admin" user!) that tells Spotlight to index the share using the mdutil command. Then keep your fingers crossed, because if several Macs are indexing the share, the system sometimes fails. Basically, Spotlight is an immature product that would have been best released after developpment was complete.
But the way windows is typically set up, to have everything on one partition, including the swap, entire disk encryption is the only good solution.
It doesn't *have* to be set up that way. You can have a C: Programs and D: Data drive in the same system. Better yet (not sure about XP, but you can do this on Server 2k3) you can mount the second drive in a directory of the main C: file system, like in UNIX. So C:\Documents and Settings can be on a different physical drive than the rest of C:
Of course, the ideal mode of operation of this drive would permit encrypted *partitions*, possibly with different passwords. You'll still have one drive (more practical in a laptop for reasons of weight and power use) but you won't have to encrypt known OS files with the same password as your data files, thus leading to the possibility of the encryption being broken.
This is one more step toward owning a computer you no longer control.
The product mentioned in TFA is all about controlling your computer and your data and keeping unauthorised people from abusing it. What kind of crack is the parent smoking?!
I bet that there's some sort of chip reader that one could build to pull passphrase for were it's stored in a chip on the board. that or pull the platters and stick them in a friendly drive
Why bother storing the passphrase. If you enter the wrong passphrase, the output of the drive will simply be scrambled and unreadable/unbootable. I suppose that they may include a passphrase check for user-friendlyness though. The bigger worry is that many of the passphrases will be (a) short and/or (b) based on common words/names. Along with a base of known data on the HDD (document headers, Windows files, etc) it shouldn't be that hard to brute-force the encryption if you have a mind to. Far better would be to put the OS files and software onto a 5GB unencrypted Flash drive, possibly combined with a RAM disk. Only data files should be on the encrypted drive itself, making cracking the thing several orders of magnitude more difficult.
Since I'm presuming password support has to be built into the OS anyway
Nah, password support will likely be built into the BIOS, making the product OS-agnostic and less prone to keyloggers operating at the lowest levels of the OS. Remember also that the *whole* drive is encrypted in this case, not just the data directories, so the OS won't even boot without a password.
Why are they wrong? Do you protest cops patrolling the streets too?
Do the cops patrolling the streets record your every movement for posterity. I'd say that the cameras are fine *as long as* the footage is destroyed after a legally binding time period (say, two months) if there is no reason to keep it (a crime in the area).
No need for the footage of someone hanging out with the "wrong" crowd to leak out 15 yrs. later when he's running for State House.
Do you honestly think that an army comprised only of snipers could win any war? Because that's what the 2nd amendment gives you.
"Arms" means "weapons." The 2nd amendment, as originally written, didn't qualify this as "to keep and bear *small* arms." This is just a later interpretation.
lso in a revolution, the military and police aren't necessarily going to be the enemy in every case--that certainly is true of the situation in Iraq.
(Mod parent up insightful!)
Not necessarily true of the regular military, but the Guard, police, and Coast Guard are mostly composed of average working blue-collar Joes, often with strong ties to the local community. No way that they'd side with some clowns in Washington while their friends and neighbors were getting their asses kicked.
Plastics leech pseudo-estrogens into liquids. Air pollution has had associations.
I vote for plastics above anything else, since air pollution has been on the decline in the US (due to de-industrialization and better pollution controls). Could we also possibly be seeing the deleterious effects of radioactive fallout from nuke tests as well as accidents like Chernobyl. This crap peaked in the late 50s/early 60s, so the last two generations - people up to around 45-50 yo - were born after this. And we know that radiation effects often "skip" a generation since genetic damage becomes amplified with each generation. So people born in the 80s might be paying for the sins[1] of their grandfathers in the 50s.
-b.
[1]- Disclaimer: not any kind of religious nut here. But aboveground nuclear testing *was* a sin against nature and the people who were exposed (don't think the fallout was confined to Nevada and Utah - hot spots extended as far as upstate NY and Vermont). In a just world, the people who decided to test nukes above ground would face a firing squad for crimes against mankind.
There is a phenomenon in nature known as parasitic castration. Parasites like their hosts to invest in them, not in the offspring of the hosts. So parasites frequently castrate their hosts -- sometimes literally -- sometimes chemically.
Lyme disease? Which may be more widespread in the Northeast than AIDS, depending on whom you ask. One of the symptoms is testicular pain, and long-term sufferers frequently have low testosterone (and thyroid hormones to boot, which makes things worse). All I really know is that when I was infected, the last thing on my mind was sex.
My city still uses lead piping to transfer most of its water, and they alkalinize the water to reduce lead levels to "acceptable" levels
Use of lead isn't exactly a *new* phenomenon though. If anything, less lead is used for drinking and eating applications today than 100 years ago. I'd be more worried about plasticizers leaching out of those new-fangled plastic water pipes:D
In the fullness of time, MS operating systems will fully implement Default Deny security, a path they have already started down; PatchGuard is part of it. When this is done, there will be nothing for anti-virus software to do.
That's the daft, *annoying* solution if you ask me. Better would be biweekly incremental backups with multiple revisions of a file saved to the limit of the backup device's storage. Or even backups to DVD-RAM or alternating devices for important data. The important thing is that the backup device is disconnected from the PC most of the time, so the data on it is essentially immutable.
The OS and software? Take an image monthly or after any major software install. If anything manky starts going on, revert to the last good image. Both of these processes can be easily automated, by the way. Treat the computer as a sandbox and only your data itself as sacred.
Noone is forcing us? What about computer vendors who bundle Vista with all their computers, just like they've bundled XP and every OS before it?
Buy computer. Insert Ubuntu CD in reader. Boot. Wait for X to come up. Click on "install". Answer some questions. Go have coffee and a smoke. Presto chango, you're now running Linux. The install process is actually less onerous than the setup questions and license click-throughs that come with a factory Windows install upon first boot.
not to mention that signature based antivirus is going to die
There's nothing *wrong* with sig-based AV per se, as long as it isn't your only defense. There're a lot of known viruses out there that can be stopped that way, as long as people keep their AV software updated.
This is like saying that doctors will stop doing blood tests for infections or the pathogens' DNA signatures.
Ah, Thanks Guy! Telling people that they shouldn't worry about viruses helps keep Spammers and Bot Nets in operation. You're a prince!
Actually, the best solution would be a hardware solution like IPCop/CopFilter (basically, Smoothwall + Spamassassin + ClamAV packet filtering) running on a home router. LinITX boxes that can run that with a decent level of speed have gotten down to about $200 on EBay, and the ones that I'm using are rock-solid reliably, decently fast, and don't encumber the computers behind them at all. That, periodic backups, and a nightly (not real-time) hard drive scan.
I think it's more like if GM et al had something inherently wrong with their engines, and someone came along with a much better part to replace in the engine to make it work well. Later, GM shipped proper parts which didn't detonate so easily, and the aftermarket part wasn't needed any more.
More like GM not fixing the failing part, putting a key lock on the hood that only they can open, and then charging a yearly fee of (say) a few hundred dollars for free replacement of broken engine parts. An upgraded, properly designed, engine part would cost $2 more per car, though.
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No grub problems. I wasn't dual booting that box anyway, so it was just a default single OS configuration. Not that MS's loader is trivial to set up for dual booting either...
-b.
If anything, it's easier than setting up Windows. Ubuntu takes 1/2 at most to install and comes with office software (OpenOffice) along with lots of other productivity stuff. Not many questions asked during install and no licensing, entry of keys, Web validation or any of that sort of crapola. For the most part, it Just Works.
-b.
There's no reason why automated tools to edit flat files can't (and do!) exist. See: YaST. Also, many applications have their own options editors. I'm saying that keeping all of one's eggs in one basket is pathetically stupid.
Your post shows that you have no real understanding of Linux.
-b.
Mischief Night aka Egg Night aka Devil's Night is traditionally the night *before* Halloween.
-b.
Yep. Not going to give money and/or support to a Microsoft stooge.
Why? OpenOffice and various other free alternatives do all of what the average user needs to do in Office. Yes, VB macros are nice, but they're not used universally. Besides, who's to say that Linux Office will even have macro support - after all, MS is dropping VB macro support for the next release of Office for OS X.
The only advantage that Office may have is the collaboration features of Outlook, and this may be done better by various web-based groupware products in the end (Outlook isn't the most stable product ever invented).
-b.
That's the most *fucking horrible* idea that I've ever heard. Flat files are actually a *good* thing in many cases, since security on each file can be controlled individually, and all applications aren't dependent on a single non-transparent object that's somewhat easily broken.
If anything, Microsoft tends to overuse the giant opaque database in their software. We don't need more of that, especially not for a desktop OS.
-b.
The fact that towns and cities actually make those laws is a problem. This should be between the parents, the kids, and possibly the people whose houses kids go to (i.e., if you don't want to be disturbed, turn off the front porch light). Overregulation at its worst - the people who pass such laws should be hanged, drawn, quartered and burnt like they did to Guy Fawkes (obligatory Halloween grossness ends).
-b.
I didn't say it should be yanked now. I said that it should be improved from what is essentially a beta product. And you're forgetting the business world: some of them would really like to be able to switch to OS X *and* have indexed/searchable network shares. Anything that increases Apple's business market share is ultimately good for Apple.
-b.
Agreed. The NeXTSTEP UI is/was much cleaner than Finder. Given a proper desktop where files and folders could be dragged and dropped, it would have been a winner. Unfortunately, Apple was tied to making OS X look somewhat like OS 9 in order to make the transition easier for the n00bs.
I also can't stand spotlight. It is a resource hog and doesn't work well
Also agreed. Not to mention that Spotlight is a screaming c*nt to get to work with networked directories. It fails if you try to get it to search NFS automounted shares unless they're users' home directories. If you manually mount a network share in Terminal, it also craps out. The only way to get a searchable share, at least in 10.4.7 and 10.4.8, it seems, it to mount it through Finder, either via "Go/Connect to Server" or via the Applescript "mount volume ..." command. Then you have to run a shell script (as real root, not as an "admin" user!) that tells Spotlight to index the share using the mdutil command. Then keep your fingers crossed, because if several Macs are indexing the share, the system sometimes fails. Basically, Spotlight is an immature product that would have been best released after developpment was complete.
-b.
It doesn't *have* to be set up that way. You can have a C: Programs and D: Data drive in the same system. Better yet (not sure about XP, but you can do this on Server 2k3) you can mount the second drive in a directory of the main C: file system, like in UNIX. So C:\Documents and Settings can be on a different physical drive than the rest of C:
Of course, the ideal mode of operation of this drive would permit encrypted *partitions*, possibly with different passwords. You'll still have one drive (more practical in a laptop for reasons of weight and power use) but you won't have to encrypt known OS files with the same password as your data files, thus leading to the possibility of the encryption being broken.
-b.
The product mentioned in TFA is all about controlling your computer and your data and keeping unauthorised people from abusing it. What kind of crack is the parent smoking?!
-b.
Why bother storing the passphrase. If you enter the wrong passphrase, the output of the drive will simply be scrambled and unreadable/unbootable. I suppose that they may include a passphrase check for user-friendlyness though. The bigger worry is that many of the passphrases will be (a) short and/or (b) based on common words/names. Along with a base of known data on the HDD (document headers, Windows files, etc) it shouldn't be that hard to brute-force the encryption if you have a mind to. Far better would be to put the OS files and software onto a 5GB unencrypted Flash drive, possibly combined with a RAM disk. Only data files should be on the encrypted drive itself, making cracking the thing several orders of magnitude more difficult.
-b.
Nah, password support will likely be built into the BIOS, making the product OS-agnostic and less prone to keyloggers operating at the lowest levels of the OS. Remember also that the *whole* drive is encrypted in this case, not just the data directories, so the OS won't even boot without a password.
-b.
Do the cops patrolling the streets record your every movement for posterity. I'd say that the cameras are fine *as long as* the footage is destroyed after a legally binding time period (say, two months) if there is no reason to keep it (a crime in the area).
No need for the footage of someone hanging out with the "wrong" crowd to leak out 15 yrs. later when he's running for State House.
-b.
"Arms" means "weapons." The 2nd amendment, as originally written, didn't qualify this as "to keep and bear *small* arms." This is just a later interpretation.
-b.
(Mod parent up insightful!)
Not necessarily true of the regular military, but the Guard, police, and Coast Guard are mostly composed of average working blue-collar Joes, often with strong ties to the local community. No way that they'd side with some clowns in Washington while their friends and neighbors were getting their asses kicked.
-b.
I vote for plastics above anything else, since air pollution has been on the decline in the US (due to de-industrialization and better pollution controls). Could we also possibly be seeing the deleterious effects of radioactive fallout from nuke tests as well as accidents like Chernobyl. This crap peaked in the late 50s/early 60s, so the last two generations - people up to around 45-50 yo - were born after this. And we know that radiation effects often "skip" a generation since genetic damage becomes amplified with each generation. So people born in the 80s might be paying for the sins[1] of their grandfathers in the 50s.
-b.
[1]- Disclaimer: not any kind of religious nut here. But aboveground nuclear testing *was* a sin against nature and the people who were exposed (don't think the fallout was confined to Nevada and Utah - hot spots extended as far as upstate NY and Vermont). In a just world, the people who decided to test nukes above ground would face a firing squad for crimes against mankind.
Lyme disease? Which may be more widespread in the Northeast than AIDS, depending on whom you ask. One of the symptoms is testicular pain, and long-term sufferers frequently have low testosterone (and thyroid hormones to boot, which makes things worse). All I really know is that when I was infected, the last thing on my mind was sex.
-b.
Use of lead isn't exactly a *new* phenomenon though. If anything, less lead is used for drinking and eating applications today than 100 years ago. I'd be more worried about plasticizers leaching out of those new-fangled plastic water pipes :D
-b.
That's the daft, *annoying* solution if you ask me. Better would be biweekly incremental backups with multiple revisions of a file saved to the limit of the backup device's storage. Or even backups to DVD-RAM or alternating devices for important data. The important thing is that the backup device is disconnected from the PC most of the time, so the data on it is essentially immutable.
The OS and software? Take an image monthly or after any major software install. If anything manky starts going on, revert to the last good image. Both of these processes can be easily automated, by the way. Treat the computer as a sandbox and only your data itself as sacred.
-b.
Buy computer. Insert Ubuntu CD in reader. Boot. Wait for X to come up. Click on "install". Answer some questions. Go have coffee and a smoke. Presto chango, you're now running Linux. The install process is actually less onerous than the setup questions and license click-throughs that come with a factory Windows install upon first boot.
-b.
There's nothing *wrong* with sig-based AV per se, as long as it isn't your only defense. There're a lot of known viruses out there that can be stopped that way, as long as people keep their AV software updated.
This is like saying that doctors will stop doing blood tests for infections or the pathogens' DNA signatures.
-b.
Actually, the best solution would be a hardware solution like IPCop/CopFilter (basically, Smoothwall + Spamassassin + ClamAV packet filtering) running on a home router. LinITX boxes that can run that with a decent level of speed have gotten down to about $200 on EBay, and the ones that I'm using are rock-solid reliably, decently fast, and don't encumber the computers behind them at all. That, periodic backups, and a nightly (not real-time) hard drive scan.
-b.
More like GM not fixing the failing part, putting a key lock on the hood that only they can open, and then charging a yearly fee of (say) a few hundred dollars for free replacement of broken engine parts. An upgraded, properly designed, engine part would cost $2 more per car, though.
-b.