Lets say you help them out and install Linux... you are now their full time support person (ass you're probably the only one they know who knows what Linux even is...) and now instead of spyware problems, you'll end up doing alot more work with teaching them a whole new operating system.
So, tell me again... Where's the start button?
*sigh*
IMHO, I say charge $40/hr, remove the spy/junkware/trojans/viruses etc, install a decent Anti-virus prog (not norton cuz it's a bitch to uninstall if the need arises[like if it gets broken by a virus])
set it to auto-update
repeat for seperate trojan/firewall/spyware software
set windows update to auto
tell them how to avoid service calls in the future, knowing full well they will be coming anyways...
and when the do, just charge them twice as much, make it take twice as long (read: let it sit in the basement for a couple of days before working on it...) say it took twice as long and was twice as hard to fix.
if they ask questions, just pull the 'excuse of the day' book (read: BOFH manual)
sorry, it was because of solar flares and sunspots, had to wait on a new software update from Microsoft to reconfigure it. After that, i had to defragment the hard disk, and then sweep through the registry...
I thought about just hooking them up with Linux, but then i thought twice. I use it, but I know what I'm doing...
A few days ago, I wrote about Videora, a BitTorrent+RSS client which makes it easy for folks to find and download torrent files from the web. The post, picked up by others generated mostly positive responses to the software. Think of Videora as TiVo-for-torrent, using RSS feeds. In an effort to shed more light to the product, I did an e-interview (via email) with Sajeeth Cherian, a Canadian student, who has hacked together this wonderful product. Here are excerpts from an e-interview.
OM: Tell me a little bit about yourself?
SC: I am a student attending Carleton University, which is located Ottawa, Canada's Capital. I am in my final year, perusing a degree in Communication Engineering and let me tell you, engineering is as hard as everyone says it is. Lately I've been interning at a couple high tech firms around the Ottawa region to get some real world experience and finish up the work experience requirement for my degree.
OM: What prompted you to write Videora?
SC: My roommate likes to watch anime and constantly scours the web looking for his favorite anime to download. (Anime is the Japanese term for Japanese animation, cartoons that are broadcast in Japan and which are then subtitled into English by groups of volunteers or commercial companies). About once a week he would complain to me how he was wasting all this time searching for these shows. I think he was wishing that these shows would just somehow download themselves. Well after a few weeks I got sick of hearing his complaints so I decide to look for a solution to his problem.
OM: Now aren't you a good roommate? mine just finished my cup-a-noodles and never replenished the pantry. Still, RSS?
SC: After searching some of his favorite anime BitTorrent sites, I came across one site which offered an RSS feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a simple format that is used by web sites to send article headlines, summaries and links back to full-text articles on the web. Anyways, this RSS feed was special, instead of linking to articles on the internet, it linked directly to the very BitTorrent files that these sites linked to on their web pages. By simply scanning the RSS feed and downloading the desired BitTorrent files it linked to, I concluded that he could download his anime automatically without ever having to surf to an anime BitTorrent website again.
After discovering this RSS feed I began to envision a product. Some thing simple, which allows users to find shows easily and a couple clicks later (after the shows are added to their 'season tickets') would automatically download these shows to their hard drives in the background. With this, users wouldn't have to look for certain video to download, because the video they want would already be on their hard drive. Thus giving them free time to do more interesting things, rather than scour the same old websites. This seemed like a killer idea with more potential than just quieting my roommate so I began to develop this idea into computer software. Along the way, I added a few other features including the ability to aggregate video files into 'want lists' which allows users to easily manually download videos of interest. Needless to say, my roommate doesn't complain to me anymore.:-)
OM: I have seen that most of the cutting edge work on peer-to-peer and torrent type programs is happening outside of the US? Does being in Canada make it easier to work on such P2P products?
SC: I don't think being in Canada makes it any easier than being in the United States to work on peer to peer products. Anyone, from any country can work on a peer to peer program without any trouble, all you need is a little computer programming know how. I read recently about a professor at Princeton who wrote a P2P product in 15 lines of code. I don't think he had any trouble producing it.
OM: What do you think is the impact of BitTorrent, RSS and other such technologies is going to be on the media - both d
there is a dumbed down version freely available that is pretty powerfull
it can be found here
Not sure just how different this one is from the one the fed's have, but it's still an interesting piece of software
I've had great luck with
MandrakeMove
love the idea of sending the live cd with the card.
the real question is whether having them use a live linux cd will reduce the ammount of in home tech support you'll be doing for your familie's new windows based computers,
or
just create the need for more house calls to learn the new system?
in short... is livecd(headache;) less than or == windows(headache;) ??
This so-called 'Internet' also reminds me of something like a Dyson sphere concept, overseeing the activities above the Internet from a birds eye view.
Neet idea, now if only i trusted the US.mil
Just one more way for them to snoop on the world for the advancement of our capitalist overlords personal interests.
In terms of functionality, i'd be happy to see something capable of pulling in satelite radio signals... I can't imagine this being too difficult, added to the recent Howard Stern switching to XM, it's clear that satelite radio is not something that will end up the way of betamax or am radio.
And if you can make it record that stream and save into a diverse array of formats, you've got a real iPod killer. add to that a decent mic built into the unit to record whatever. It'd be handy for getting decent quality digital samples (from the real world) for use in music, movies, etc...
but of course, i'd rather just see Apple integrate this functionality into an upcoming iteration of the iPod, which as we all know is it's *own* killer.
I for one welcome our new rice grain sized overlords
Just think of all the other wonderful uses once the technology becomes more widely accepted...
No more lines at the airport for people with the chip!
metal detectors augmented with RFID scanning / live reporting / updating tools...
"I'm sorry, sir... you are not allowed on the plane. It says here you use something called Linux, and apparently that's only used for pirating copies of window$, making you a terrorist. This transaction has also just been added to your RFID file. Have a nice day"
I understand your points, and don't think you a troll, but here's my take:
1. Competition is not something that needs to be a violent activity. There are many forms of competition which have helped further evolution which havn't involved people being killed.
2. You're right. Competition is a proponent of growth, and to stop growing is to start dying.
3. Very true, but... Why are they allowed to achieve this?
4. Why are these nations seeking to use millitary force against eachother? If it's our guardian overlords who are charged with maintaining stability, they clearly are failing at their tasks if other nations are seeking millitary offence against the nation said guardians are charged to defend.
5. i fail to understand how being able to carry guns helps prevent said guardian overlords from becoming self-serving and corrupt. Are there no functioning nations which prohibit a person from bearing arms?
I may be a pacifist, but i wouldn't consider myself naive. Slightly idealist, perhaps. I do understand we don't live in a perfect world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for one. If not, what 'are' we doing to help ourselves and our future?
To quote one of history's most renound pacifists:
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which i abhor. That a man can take pleasure marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent non-sense that goes by the name of patriotism - How i hate them! War seems to be a mean, contemptable thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have dissapeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press"
are we that insercure that we need to blow eachother up becasuse we can't agree with eachother?
even the 'right to bear arms' is insane. why, in any civilized world, should people need weapons?
Now, i know we're not living in our star trek utopian age at this point, but you figure humanity would wake up one day, look at the state of the world and just say 'ok, what the heck are we doing to ourselves?'
putting money into war takes away from advancing humanity. sure, technology gets a boost... and we have hundreds of new ways to incapacitate people... what an achievement.
I say pull the carpet from under the corrupt bastards in charge and actually work towards 'REAL' peace, and not just perpetual war.
Both google.ca and local.google.ca traceroute to servers in California...
Go fig.
I'll be a happy man when Canada actually has some more impressive network capabilities of it's own, instead of routing and piggybacking everything to the US. (sorry if the department of homeland security scares me...) This includes the talented programmers and people who operate the networks themeselves, who all seem to go to the states for the $$.
I know we're laying lightpipe down everywhere to get ready for something big coming down the pipe... At least in the greater Toronto area, that is
For the record:
Name: local.google.ca
IP Address: 64.233.167.99
Location: Sunnyvale (37.417N, 122.061W)
Network: GOOGLE
Name: google.ca
IP Address: 216.239.57.104
Location: Sunnyvale (37.417N, 122.061W)
Network: GOOGLE
Slashdot Mirror
True
BUT
Lets say you help them out and install Linux... you are now their full time support person (ass you're probably the only one they know who knows what Linux even is...) and now instead of spyware problems, you'll end up doing alot more work with teaching them a whole new operating system.
So, tell me again... Where's the start button?
*sigh*
IMHO, I say charge $40/hr, remove the spy/junkware/trojans/viruses etc, install a decent Anti-virus prog (not norton cuz it's a bitch to uninstall if the need arises[like if it gets broken by a virus])
set it to auto-update
repeat for seperate trojan/firewall/spyware software
set windows update to auto
tell them how to avoid service calls in the future, knowing full well they will be coming anyways...
and when the do, just charge them twice as much, make it take twice as long (read: let it sit in the basement for a couple of days before working on it...) say it took twice as long and was twice as hard to fix.
if they ask questions, just pull the 'excuse of the day' book (read: BOFH manual)
sorry, it was because of solar flares and sunspots, had to wait on a new software update from Microsoft to reconfigure it. After that, i had to defragment the hard disk, and then sweep through the registry...
I thought about just hooking them up with Linux, but then i thought twice. I use it, but I know what I'm doing...
it's not from the NYT site, it's the interview of the guy who wrote Videora, which is at this site.
Videora, like TiVo for Torrents
:-)
A few days ago, I wrote about Videora, a BitTorrent+RSS client which makes it easy for folks to find and download torrent files from the web. The post, picked up by others generated mostly positive responses to the software. Think of Videora as TiVo-for-torrent, using RSS feeds. In an effort to shed more light to the product, I did an e-interview (via email) with Sajeeth Cherian, a Canadian student, who has hacked together this wonderful product. Here are excerpts from an e-interview.
OM: Tell me a little bit about yourself?
SC: I am a student attending Carleton University, which is located Ottawa, Canada's Capital. I am in my final year, perusing a degree in Communication Engineering and let me tell you, engineering is as hard as everyone says it is. Lately I've been interning at a couple high tech firms around the Ottawa region to get some real world experience and finish up the work experience requirement for my degree.
OM: What prompted you to write Videora?
SC: My roommate likes to watch anime and constantly scours the web looking for his favorite anime to download. (Anime is the Japanese term for Japanese animation, cartoons that are broadcast in Japan and which are then subtitled into English by groups of volunteers or commercial companies). About once a week he would complain to me how he was wasting all this time searching for these shows. I think he was wishing that these shows would just somehow download themselves. Well after a few weeks I got sick of hearing his complaints so I decide to look for a solution to his problem.
OM: Now aren't you a good roommate? mine just finished my cup-a-noodles and never replenished the pantry. Still, RSS? SC: After searching some of his favorite anime BitTorrent sites, I came across one site which offered an RSS feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a simple format that is used by web sites to send article headlines, summaries and links back to full-text articles on the web. Anyways, this RSS feed was special, instead of linking to articles on the internet, it linked directly to the very BitTorrent files that these sites linked to on their web pages. By simply scanning the RSS feed and downloading the desired BitTorrent files it linked to, I concluded that he could download his anime automatically without ever having to surf to an anime BitTorrent website again.
After discovering this RSS feed I began to envision a product. Some thing simple, which allows users to find shows easily and a couple clicks later (after the shows are added to their 'season tickets') would automatically download these shows to their hard drives in the background. With this, users wouldn't have to look for certain video to download, because the video they want would already be on their hard drive. Thus giving them free time to do more interesting things, rather than scour the same old websites. This seemed like a killer idea with more potential than just quieting my roommate so I began to develop this idea into computer software. Along the way, I added a few other features including the ability to aggregate video files into 'want lists' which allows users to easily manually download videos of interest. Needless to say, my roommate doesn't complain to me anymore.
OM: I have seen that most of the cutting edge work on peer-to-peer and torrent type programs is happening outside of the US? Does being in Canada make it easier to work on such P2P products? SC: I don't think being in Canada makes it any easier than being in the United States to work on peer to peer products. Anyone, from any country can work on a peer to peer program without any trouble, all you need is a little computer programming know how. I read recently about a professor at Princeton who wrote a P2P product in 15 lines of code. I don't think he had any trouble producing it.
OM: What do you think is the impact of BitTorrent, RSS and other such technologies is going to be on the media - both d
Christmas is the most Capitalized holiday of them all...
looks like it could be a part of the burning man festival
there is a dumbed down version freely available that is pretty powerfull
it can be found here
Not sure just how different this one is from the one the fed's have, but it's still an interesting piece of software
Makes me wonder what my school, University of Ontario Institure for Technology, will be doing considering they use ThinkPads exclusively
Wouldn't something like this work nicely?
I've had great luck with MandrakeMove
love the idea of sending the live cd with the card.
the real question is whether having them use a live linux cd will reduce the ammount of in home tech support you'll be doing for your familie's new windows based computers,
or
just create the need for more house calls to learn the new system?
in short... is livecd(headache;) less than or == windows(headache;) ??
What do you think the little box does?
it's the flux capacitor
totally the first thing i thought of!
This so-called 'Internet' also reminds me of something like a Dyson sphere concept, overseeing the activities above the Internet from a birds eye view.
Neet idea, now if only i trusted the US.mil
Just one more way for them to snoop on the world for the advancement of our capitalist overlords personal interests.
Hmmmm...
it's be pretty bitchin if there you could connect it with a cluster for effects / dsp and other proc heavy tasks...
My question is will they be able to see the American flag that *supposedly* resides up there...
this is assuming that they really *did* land on the moon
In terms of functionality, i'd be happy to see something capable of pulling in satelite radio signals... I can't imagine this being too difficult, added to the recent Howard Stern switching to XM, it's clear that satelite radio is not something that will end up the way of betamax or am radio.
And if you can make it record that stream and save into a diverse array of formats, you've got a real iPod killer. add to that a decent mic built into the unit to record whatever. It'd be handy for getting decent quality digital samples (from the real world) for use in music, movies, etc...
but of course, i'd rather just see Apple integrate this functionality into an upcoming iteration of the iPod, which as we all know is it's *own* killer.
I for one welcome our new rice grain sized overlords
Just think of all the other wonderful uses once the technology becomes more widely accepted...
No more lines at the airport for people with the chip!
metal detectors augmented with RFID scanning / live reporting / updating tools...
"I'm sorry, sir... you are not allowed on the plane. It says here you use something called Linux, and apparently that's only used for pirating copies of window$, making you a terrorist. This transaction has also just been added to your RFID file. Have a nice day"
1. Competition is not something that needs to be a violent activity. There are many forms of competition which have helped further evolution which havn't involved people being killed.
2. You're right. Competition is a proponent of growth, and to stop growing is to start dying.
3. Very true, but... Why are they allowed to achieve this?
4. Why are these nations seeking to use millitary force against eachother? If it's our guardian overlords who are charged with maintaining stability, they clearly are failing at their tasks if other nations are seeking millitary offence against the nation said guardians are charged to defend.
5. i fail to understand how being able to carry guns helps prevent said guardian overlords from becoming self-serving and corrupt. Are there no functioning nations which prohibit a person from bearing arms?
I may be a pacifist, but i wouldn't consider myself naive. Slightly idealist, perhaps. I do understand we don't live in a perfect world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for one. If not, what 'are' we doing to help ourselves and our future?
To quote one of history's most renound pacifists:
The world as I see it (1949)
Humanity will just put down the guns already...
are we that insercure that we need to blow eachother up becasuse we can't agree with eachother?
even the 'right to bear arms' is insane. why, in any civilized world, should people need weapons?
Now, i know we're not living in our star trek utopian age at this point, but you figure humanity would wake up one day, look at the state of the world and just say 'ok, what the heck are we doing to ourselves?'
putting money into war takes away from advancing humanity. sure, technology gets a boost... and we have hundreds of new ways to incapacitate people... what an achievement.
I say pull the carpet from under the corrupt bastards in charge and actually work towards 'REAL' peace, and not just perpetual war.
Both google.ca and local.google.ca traceroute to servers in California... Go fig. I'll be a happy man when Canada actually has some more impressive network capabilities of it's own, instead of routing and piggybacking everything to the US. (sorry if the department of homeland security scares me...) This includes the talented programmers and people who operate the networks themeselves, who all seem to go to the states for the $$. I know we're laying lightpipe down everywhere to get ready for something big coming down the pipe... At least in the greater Toronto area, that is For the record: Name: local.google.ca IP Address: 64.233.167.99 Location: Sunnyvale (37.417N, 122.061W) Network: GOOGLE Name: google.ca IP Address: 216.239.57.104 Location: Sunnyvale (37.417N, 122.061W) Network: GOOGLE
I wonder if there's any way just to unlock it ahead of time... =\
The concept and design is great, but must we continue to force ourselves to use yet another windows interface?