Similar problem here, but so far I don't think mine's been hacked, yet. What I've done is set up a Squid server on the public and redirect all web requests back to the Win2k machine sitting on the private network. A reverse proxy, if you will. I also monitor all network traffic on this machine and am pretty confident it's doing only those things I ask it to do (well, when it's willing to, anyway...).
You didn't piss me off, at all. Sorry if I gave you less credit than I should have...
I don't know if I'm really pissed at anyone, actually... Perhaps I just wish I had more than 4 digital tracks to finish up my current recording project.
I enjoy tinkering, also. I just enjoy creating far more. That's why I lock the screens at 5 pm and head into the room with the music gear. Of course, there are PC's in there that are needed to record music and one of them runs Windows... Which is probably the true origin of that rant. >:)
Thanks Narf. Bladeenc is my best friend. But, I don't usually get to him until after I've spent many hours with my digital multi-tracker getting my material sounding what it needs to sound like. I hope people like yourself continue to motivate the industry to keep technologies like Linux alive and encourage application programmers to port useful tools to the platform so guys like me can use them.
It's not about money: I paid $500 for Cakewalk 1.0 in 1991 for Win3.1. Thanks for piping up.
I didn't suggest that Intel's SSE2 was better than Motorola's AltiVec; I just offered the thought that if hardware specs were more open, there would be potential for a better end result... Perhaps you were more focused on the "Macintosh is Great!" thought.
It's about the result; not the means. I'm hoping we can all get there. Let's not be adversarial....
ColdFusion shouldn't need it's own machine. It's a shitty package, but it pays my bills, so I code in it. My primary server has been running PHP since PHP-FI. It's on an AMD K6-2 450 with 128MBytes RAM that gets rebooted every couple years. It's on a slackware system with no monitor. I fucking love it! So do all my friends whose web sites get served by it.
I don't run heavy-duty anything on machines that are production. My whole point is I don't mind rebooting, but I do mind that since there are no Pro-Tools type things for the Intel platform that run on Linux, the task I wanted to accomplish that lured me into the technology thing in the first place never gets addressed. That's 'cause MicroSoft usurped the whole thing into the abortion it is today and no one codes those eccentric applications for the Intel architecture "we" artists love to play with.
I'm getting off topic, but you triggered that response that got me into IT as a result of my frustration that technology companies didn't give artists tools that were useful to begin with unless it was on the Mac and that was a whole 'nother battle I'd rather not recoup either.
I'm not natively a Linux zealot. I'm a songwriter. But, Linux has freed me from the 95% problem Windoze introduced since I make my living doing technical shit. It does things handily that Windows stuff can't do without a reboot all the time. I can trust my mail and webservers to do their job without having to fuck with them. All these id1ots who get into this Windows vs. Mac vs. BSD vs. Linux shit are missing the point every time because all they care about is technology for technology's sake. That is the problem! Innovation, by definition, is some dude (or chick) hanging out in their bedroom at 4 am conquering a poem they've put to some chord pattern next to a bass guru, or someone helping him / her turn it into a song. Or, writing a screenplay... Whatever; the technology should abet these processes, not define them; or be defined by them. It's a fucking tool! When you look at Gammage Auditorium (a Frank Lloyd Wright creation) you don't wonder what fucking hammer they used to put up the 2x4s. You go: "hey, that's a cool fucking building..." Let's get it straight people. It's the end result, not the tool that matters. But, when the tool becomes restrictive, we need to pause... The Intel architecture is cool. The MAC architecture is cool. The software for both sucks ass! Give me something I can create with, and, maybe I'll draw up a schematic diagram for a cool auditorium for you, or write a pretty song you can use with which you can get your girlfriend to sleep with you.
Linux doesn't do useful things like music production because no one writes apps for it. If they did: you'd have a great application on a Linux platform that didn't require a reboot, ever! Trust me. I know this to be true. We just need the apps to prove it. Or fuck it... I'll get a goddamned Mac already once DigiDesign ports ProTools to OS X-dot-II. I'm sick of fucking around with technology company's priorities. I wanna write some fucking songs. Hopefully, my point got through all that venting....
You use a shitload of firepower to do some pretty trivial things with your technologies, which exposes you as a WinHead rather than a MacHead, and I'm not riduculing you because you are one, and you are. I'm taking issue with the fact that you're not looking under the hood and that's 'cause you can't, won't, and as long as you don't question, never will. But, you are fucking the true innovators by holding the position you appear to have taken. Don't apologize to us; just accept it and take ownership of it.
Lastly: I don't play games with my technology. I never have. I only get to live once... I want to do something useful with my one guy... Thanks for the response. It was insightful...
I'm not so sure if the limitations in audio and video applications are due to the i386 architecture or Windows, but I'm inclined to think it's more a software problem than a hardware problem. I love Linux for the limited things it does so well and reliably, but really wish there were more creative applications for Linux than there are. Lately, I've been taxing my Win2k (yes, I actually own one of them) with Cakewalk, Soundforge, MidiQuest tasks and it's starting to really feel the pain (can't make it run for several days at a time any longer, yet I think that's because of ColdFusion MX and that damned cfmail tag).
I'm starting to get really envious of all those MacHeads who seem to always stick with their beloved Apples. Frankly, I left the Mac in '93 because OS 7+ was such a freaking disaster to try and work with, but now that OS X is coming of age and all those OS 9-- applications are getting ported over, perhaps there's a brighter future for artist applications like ProTools and Adobe Photoshop. I mean, it's not like it takes too many switches to do a gcc ProTools.c on one architecture over the other does it? >:)
Perhaps we'll find out whether it's the hardware architecture or the operating system that's limited productive creative applications sooner than we think. We just need those Windows users to keep jumping ship; since the MacHeads don't appear to be willing to do so...
About 10 years ago, I submitted tapes of my material through the Readers_Digest_Songwriters_Market : RequestToSubmit : SendTape : Never_Hear_Anything_Back_Except_For_Promotion_Scam s process and wasted a lot of money doing it. Now that technology has become affordable, along with talented and experienced sound engineers, I'm reproducing the tracks / spending many hours in the shed each week and taking the final CD out to the coffee shops and smoke-filled bars to try and spread my work around that way.
Having spent a considerable amount of time touring, do you see this as a viable approach for undiscovered songwriter / artists to get their message out; perhaps the only one? Do you know other signed artists personally who are still benefitting from the legacy A&R / Promotion-heavy approach who might be considering the recent turns of events in their current model of distribution? Are they planning to focus more on touring if the current CD sales slump doesn't turn around?
As a side note, I love where all this is going and look forward to the promise of a world where we can get access to creative content unfiltered by the RIAA. With cheap / useful technology, artists should be able to finally get some real creative work done. I only hope our lobbyists don't legislate that potential away from us...
This is the very point. The record industry association of america has to be unseated. For every britney speers there are a thousand voices out there that I don't get a chance to hear because they have to get through the a&r reps first. And, the labels say there's just too much crap to syphon through to get to the good stuff. That may be true, but I'd like to be the judge for myself.
Right now, you can find at least 10 times, or more original, creative content on the Internet, and that will just continue to grow if the industry doesn't shut it down. That's what they want to do, and we need to shut them down before they do it. I want all the record shelves to be empty until the consuming public gets it established in the sweat of the artists who wrote that content that most, if not all proceeds with the exception of production and marketing costs go to the person who wrote the damn song.
In the meantime, Britney can pay her rent from playing gigs, which is what she has to do anyway. Well, except for selling Pepsi, but I don't drink that, either. Stop buying CD's and go to a show!!! The artist isn't getting your money from the CD. I know, because I am one.
Thanks for being honest. The only way these artists make any decent money is to gig anyway, which is the most fun part of being a musician, to me. It's also a shame they don't own their song rights anyway, so really you're only hurting the very industry that's turned it's back on artists to their own avarice...
Do you buy CD's from independent artists you see about town when you go out? Or, do you not check out local bands? Just curious...
First: I'm a songwriter/artist. Yesterday I needed to pick up some blank CD's for some material for the drummer to review and was at Fry's Electronics. I picked up a pack of 50 that said CD-R for Audio on it. It was marked down on the shelf, but not on the package, so I asked a sales guy on the floor to double-check the price, which was $14.50. But, he asked what I was using them for and I told him music and he told me I didn't need to use the ones labeled "audio" and that 2 cents of each blank goes to the RIAA and that there's a serial number on them. So, I bought the ones that didn't have any label ("Data" or "Audio"), which cost $14.99, but at least I'm not contributing to the enemy, if what this guy at Fry's told me is true.
I'd be curious if anyone else can validate what he said. Also, I notice that my own CD's that I make on a CD-RW drive in one of my machines won't play in my Mom's 2002 Honda. My buddy Layden Robinson just released his 2nd CD, Verse a couple months ago and paid someone to do it and those won't play, either. Does anyone know if this has something to do with the serial number, perhaps? It would suck if paying the RIAA the extra couple pennies would make it possible to play them in newer consumer-based CD players, but it would be interesting to know if that's what's going on...
Anyone with any common sence knows that windows xp...
Some of us with common sense will never even "Xperience" XP... But, out of curiosity, are you saying that user profiles (a.k.a./home directories in the *n*x world) are no longer hard-wired to the c: partition in this version of Windoze? Again; just curious...
The DOT's don't want to get into the business of traffic enforcement for revenue enchancement
Let's assume you meant revenue enhancement, since that is precisely one of the most interesting things to civil servants aside from the other interesting thing that is "cost abatement." They're government agencies with finite budgets and increasing demands trying to stay in their elected / appointed positions. If the cops can find ways to "enhance" their budget using technology already available from another government agency, you don't think DOTs would exploit them? They most certainly would!
The only way to secure citizens' rights with these emerging technologies is to design them so it's technically impossible for cross-polination of data. Sad to say, but securing citizen's rights ceased to be a public servants priority about 11 months ago...
My primary just went down after 417... Bad memory stick / or mobo... not sure yet, but this little 486 is still pluggin' along: vanboers@yuma:~$ uptime
3:10pm up 448 days, 18:55, 1 user, load average: 2.14, 1.45, 1.26
(and, for the curious): vanboers@yuma:~$ top -b -n 1 | head -n 10 | tail -n 3
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND 11967 vanboers 16 6 15076 10M 1364 R N 62.8 61.8 2832h setiathome
If people want to watch T.V., they should watch T.V. Browser technology with a decent soundcard might be good enough to hear an mp3, but that's about as far as I'd push it. There's no bandwidth; with isolated exceptions. Most people don't use DSL or Cable.
Lastly, the browsers bleed way to much about the person viewing the content than appropriate. At least Mozilla and Konqueror give you the ability to modify this behavior. If you turn off cookies and javascript and the site flips you the bird, you're an idiot to return.
If people insist on using I.E.; they're just populating corporate America's dbs. Why do you think corporate web-sites insist on I.E.? Perhaps their VBStudio.Net web developers don't know how to collect all that data using server-side programming techniques. People seem to be commited to visit these sites, anyway. If all sites eventually require I.E., then my bookmarks.html will finally be empty and I'll be able to just check my e-Mail and continue with my day.
"The only reason why I'm using windows is because MS office is still superior..."
Superior to what? My first glimpse / use of Excel (1.0? 2.2?) was on a Mac in '91. It worked great until Mac OS 6.5+ and Office 4.2 for productivity and back office tasks became far too buggy ('95?). Perhaps M$ Office was superior in '95, it's certainly not in 2002 ('02 for some).
Try doing a simple Excel spreadsheet to determine how much time elapsed between a couple dates. Copy a date formatted 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:nn:ss' into a cell and another to the right and attempt a simple =timevalue(a1)-timevalue(b1). You'll get #VALUE!. Seriusly; try it!
Now go into a shell (UNIX shell) and create a few rows of these types of dates in csv format, import and now your timevalue functions work. Don't even attempt copy-pasting from a netscape 6.2 browser to do this task.
Now try working with a Chart. Define a column of labels and a column of values and use the wizard. Then add a row. Now try and change the chart's row source by editing the property by hand and change the last row number. Won't work. Start dragging the data area with your mouse when the little pseudo-wizard prompts you to make changes to your chart area and voila! Everything works, now. Hmmmmmmm...
Point is, with each new release of Office, or anything M$ the box shrinks a little more. I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt. I wouldn't know since I've never seen or used that OS; feel free to correct me -- I'm sure I'll just have to take your word for it. Clearly, many things you used to do the hard way by hand-editing things within Office are no longer practical. I'm sure 95% of the people out there never had the desire / need to manipulate data source values for embedded charts either. Hell, probably less than that even new you could make a chart without the wizard. It's probably pointless to want to do such a thing.
Perhaps Office is superior to OpenOffice / StarOffice, but you have to ask for whom. I don't mind wizards, but making it so you can't use anything but is clearly the worst case of cattle-herding innovation destruction I can think of.
It's funny that I got off the Mac in 1995 and recommended Win 3.1 for all the business applications software needs at my job back then due to the frustration of the crashes and the utter lack of a command shell on Mac OS 6.5 to try and solve problems. Strange irony that Mac OS X is actually starting to show some adoption. I'd hate to see Palladium actually come to pass, because Linux has done some tremendously positive things to try and hold off the destruction of consumer control M$ has marketed so vehemently and successfully, but if it does -- a G4 is looking pretty good to me...
I haven't used Windows for my desktop since Slackware 3.0, but that's not very relevant anymore. As a songwriter trying to get my stuff heard I have to put it in a format that most people use to play such content: Windows users. So, if that's what my listeners will use (and, they clearly won't use anything else), that's the format I've been putting it in.
People can still get that content, but not for much longer without restrictions. Interesting thing is if I were lucky enough to get published I still wouldn't get more than 3% - 7% anyway. Most of it would go to whatever label/producer I signed over most of my rights to: Virgin, BMI, Epic, whoever. So, what do I care if my shit gets pirated.
So the only way to make a buck in this business is to drag my boards out to the clubs and play while my listeners have a few drinks and dance along. Far more pleasant than sitting in a dark room downloading Britney Spears mp3s, anyway.
Since we'll never own our machines anyway as these new laws to protect the RIAA, MPAA, and software companies get enacted, if you really want to make a statement, quit buying CD's at $20 a pop and go to an open mic, or bar and see real musicians play real music (except for Britney, of course). At least that way you can make sure artists are getting a few bucks for their efforts. Some of us actually make our own CD's and sell them to help us support ourselves, as well. You might even get to meet a real chick. >:)
In all seriousness, I'm curious... Running a virus scanner per chance on a regular (or irregular) basis?
'Fraid not... I started using Slackware when Win95 came out. Since I don't have total confidence that Norton and the like don't fuel their own industry I also don't recommend AV products to friends, or clients. My clients understand that if they get a virus from a word doc we're collaborating on, it's unlikely my Star Office 5.2 was responsible and they take the responsibility for their AV needs, if they think that stuff is important.
I've never run across a home PC user who wouldn't get by just as well with Slackware, FreeBSD, or Mac OS9 or X, either for their basic needs, but they all still use Windows regardless. My guess is because they don't sell anything else to home PC consumers in any retail outlets, but that is yet another story.
I can understand the frustrations with the Imacs, but take heart that the OS of the Apples has finally evolved into something that can endure beyond Jobs. Personally, I'm excited to see what the multimedia developers can produce with such a great OS/hardware combination. Imagine running a digital audio workstation that never crashes! But, of course it would need to be G4, or better...
How the hell do you know what this "idiot" is wearing???
From your post, it occurs to me your help-desk job keeps you too close to real "idiots" who appear (since you reference Klez) to get incessantly re-infected, and this probably manifests itself in your opinion that all these virus threats are real. Trust me, my mullet-donning friend; they are not. I can count on one hand the number of windows (or AOL) using "idiots" I've had to rescue from virus infections and probably most people (if not all) use Windows (and a third of them AOL). I definitely have more than five friends...
Michael's right: the AV companies spread FUD to increase profits. This should be obvious to anyone: whether they wear a uniform, or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Similar problem here, but so far I don't think mine's been hacked, yet. What I've done is set up a Squid server on the public and redirect all web requests back to the Win2k machine sitting on the private network. A reverse proxy, if you will. I also monitor all network traffic on this machine and am pretty confident it's doing only those things I ask it to do (well, when it's willing to, anyway...).
You didn't piss me off, at all. Sorry if I gave you less credit than I should have...
I don't know if I'm really pissed at anyone, actually... Perhaps I just wish I had more than 4 digital tracks to finish up my current recording project.
I enjoy tinkering, also. I just enjoy creating far more. That's why I lock the screens at 5 pm and head into the room with the music gear. Of course, there are PC's in there that are needed to record music and one of them runs Windows... Which is probably the true origin of that rant. >:)
Thanks Narf. Bladeenc is my best friend. But, I don't usually get to him until after I've spent many hours with my digital multi-tracker getting my material sounding what it needs to sound like. I hope people like yourself continue to motivate the industry to keep technologies like Linux alive and encourage application programmers to port useful tools to the platform so guys like me can use them.
It's not about money: I paid $500 for Cakewalk 1.0 in 1991 for Win3.1. Thanks for piping up.
I didn't suggest that Intel's SSE2 was better than Motorola's AltiVec; I just offered the thought that if hardware specs were more open, there would be potential for a better end result... Perhaps you were more focused on the "Macintosh is Great!" thought.
It's about the result; not the means. I'm hoping we can all get there. Let's not be adversarial....
ColdFusion shouldn't need it's own machine. It's a shitty package, but it pays my bills, so I code in it. My primary server has been running PHP since PHP-FI. It's on an AMD K6-2 450 with 128MBytes RAM that gets rebooted every couple years. It's on a slackware system with no monitor. I fucking love it! So do all my friends whose web sites get served by it.
I don't run heavy-duty anything on machines that are production. My whole point is I don't mind rebooting, but I do mind that since there are no Pro-Tools type things for the Intel platform that run on Linux, the task I wanted to accomplish that lured me into the technology thing in the first place never gets addressed. That's 'cause MicroSoft usurped the whole thing into the abortion it is today and no one codes those eccentric applications for the Intel architecture "we" artists love to play with.
I'm getting off topic, but you triggered that response that got me into IT as a result of my frustration that technology companies didn't give artists tools that were useful to begin with unless it was on the Mac and that was a whole 'nother battle I'd rather not recoup either.
I'm not natively a Linux zealot. I'm a songwriter. But, Linux has freed me from the 95% problem Windoze introduced since I make my living doing technical shit. It does things handily that Windows stuff can't do without a reboot all the time. I can trust my mail and webservers to do their job without having to fuck with them. All these id1ots who get into this Windows vs. Mac vs. BSD vs. Linux shit are missing the point every time because all they care about is technology for technology's sake. That is the problem! Innovation, by definition, is some dude (or chick) hanging out in their bedroom at 4 am conquering a poem they've put to some chord pattern next to a bass guru, or someone helping him / her turn it into a song. Or, writing a screenplay... Whatever; the technology should abet these processes, not define them; or be defined by them. It's a fucking tool! When you look at Gammage Auditorium (a Frank Lloyd Wright creation) you don't wonder what fucking hammer they used to put up the 2x4s. You go: "hey, that's a cool fucking building..." Let's get it straight people. It's the end result, not the tool that matters. But, when the tool becomes restrictive, we need to pause... The Intel architecture is cool. The MAC architecture is cool. The software for both sucks ass! Give me something I can create with, and, maybe I'll draw up a schematic diagram for a cool auditorium for you, or write a pretty song you can use with which you can get your girlfriend to sleep with you.
Linux doesn't do useful things like music production because no one writes apps for it. If they did: you'd have a great application on a Linux platform that didn't require a reboot, ever! Trust me. I know this to be true. We just need the apps to prove it. Or fuck it... I'll get a goddamned Mac already once DigiDesign ports ProTools to OS X-dot-II. I'm sick of fucking around with technology company's priorities. I wanna write some fucking songs. Hopefully, my point got through all that venting....
You use a shitload of firepower to do some pretty trivial things with your technologies, which exposes you as a WinHead rather than a MacHead, and I'm not riduculing you because you are one, and you are. I'm taking issue with the fact that you're not looking under the hood and that's 'cause you can't, won't, and as long as you don't question, never will. But, you are fucking the true innovators by holding the position you appear to have taken. Don't apologize to us; just accept it and take ownership of it.
Lastly: I don't play games with my technology. I never have. I only get to live once... I want to do something useful with my one guy... Thanks for the response. It was insightful...
I'm not so sure if the limitations in audio and video applications are due to the i386 architecture or Windows, but I'm inclined to think it's more a software problem than a hardware problem. I love Linux for the limited things it does so well and reliably, but really wish there were more creative applications for Linux than there are. Lately, I've been taxing my Win2k (yes, I actually own one of them) with Cakewalk, Soundforge, MidiQuest tasks and it's starting to really feel the pain (can't make it run for several days at a time any longer, yet I think that's because of ColdFusion MX and that damned cfmail tag).
I'm starting to get really envious of all those MacHeads who seem to always stick with their beloved Apples. Frankly, I left the Mac in '93 because OS 7+ was such a freaking disaster to try and work with, but now that OS X is coming of age and all those OS 9-- applications are getting ported over, perhaps there's a brighter future for artist applications like ProTools and Adobe Photoshop. I mean, it's not like it takes too many switches to do a gcc ProTools.c on one architecture over the other does it? >:)
Perhaps we'll find out whether it's the hardware architecture or the operating system that's limited productive creative applications sooner than we think. We just need those Windows users to keep jumping ship; since the MacHeads don't appear to be willing to do so...
About 10 years ago, I submitted tapes of my material through the Readers_Digest_Songwriters_Market : RequestToSubmit : SendTape : Never_Hear_Anything_Back_Except_For_Promotion_Sca
Having spent a considerable amount of time touring, do you see this as a viable approach for undiscovered songwriter / artists to get their message out; perhaps the only one? Do you know other signed artists personally who are still benefitting from the legacy A&R / Promotion-heavy approach who might be considering the recent turns of events in their current model of distribution? Are they planning to focus more on touring if the current CD sales slump doesn't turn around?
As a side note, I love where all this is going and look forward to the promise of a world where we can get access to creative content unfiltered by the RIAA. With cheap / useful technology, artists should be able to finally get some real creative work done. I only hope our lobbyists don't legislate that potential away from us...
This is the very point. The record industry association of america has to be unseated. For every britney speers there are a thousand voices out there that I don't get a chance to hear because they have to get through the a&r reps first. And, the labels say there's just too much crap to syphon through to get to the good stuff. That may be true, but I'd like to be the judge for myself.
Right now, you can find at least 10 times, or more original, creative content on the Internet, and that will just continue to grow if the industry doesn't shut it down. That's what they want to do, and we need to shut them down before they do it. I want all the record shelves to be empty until the consuming public gets it established in the sweat of the artists who wrote that content that most, if not all proceeds with the exception of production and marketing costs go to the person who wrote the damn song.
In the meantime, Britney can pay her rent from playing gigs, which is what she has to do anyway. Well, except for selling Pepsi, but I don't drink that, either. Stop buying CD's and go to a show!!! The artist isn't getting your money from the CD. I know, because I am one.
Thanks for being honest. The only way these artists make any decent money is to gig anyway, which is the most fun part of being a musician, to me. It's also a shame they don't own their song rights anyway, so really you're only hurting the very industry that's turned it's back on artists to their own avarice...
Do you buy CD's from independent artists you see about town when you go out? Or, do you not check out local bands? Just curious...
First: I'm a songwriter/artist. Yesterday I needed to pick up some blank CD's for some material for the drummer to review and was at Fry's Electronics. I picked up a pack of 50 that said CD-R for Audio on it. It was marked down on the shelf, but not on the package, so I asked a sales guy on the floor to double-check the price, which was $14.50. But, he asked what I was using them for and I told him music and he told me I didn't need to use the ones labeled "audio" and that 2 cents of each blank goes to the RIAA and that there's a serial number on them. So, I bought the ones that didn't have any label ("Data" or "Audio"), which cost $14.99, but at least I'm not contributing to the enemy, if what this guy at Fry's told me is true.
I'd be curious if anyone else can validate what he said. Also, I notice that my own CD's that I make on a CD-RW drive in one of my machines won't play in my Mom's 2002 Honda. My buddy Layden Robinson just released his 2nd CD, Verse a couple months ago and paid someone to do it and those won't play, either. Does anyone know if this has something to do with the serial number, perhaps? It would suck if paying the RIAA the extra couple pennies would make it possible to play them in newer consumer-based CD players, but it would be interesting to know if that's what's going on...
If most web-sites render correctly, and one (or a select few) do not, then what again is wrong with the client machine and it's browser?
And I'll bet they think you're an arrogant little asshole!
And, I'm sure he doesn't care... I wouldn't.
Anyone with any common sence knows that windows xp...
Some of us with common sense will never even "Xperience" XP... But, out of curiosity, are you saying that user profiles (a.k.a.
The DOT's don't want to get into the business of traffic enforcement for revenue enchancement
Let's assume you meant revenue enhancement, since that is precisely one of the most interesting things to civil servants aside from the other interesting thing that is "cost abatement." They're government agencies with finite budgets and increasing demands trying to stay in their elected / appointed positions. If the cops can find ways to "enhance" their budget using technology already available from another government agency, you don't think DOTs would exploit them? They most certainly would!
The only way to secure citizens' rights with these emerging technologies is to design them so it's technically impossible for cross-polination of data. Sad to say, but securing citizen's rights ceased to be a public servants priority about 11 months ago...
voy03 # uptime
4:56pm up 306 days, 8:25, 1 user, load average: 13.70, 12.11, 10.17
That load average is a killer!
My primary just went down after 417... Bad memory stick / or mobo... not sure yet, but this little 486 is still pluggin' along:
vanboers@yuma:~$ uptime
3:10pm up 448 days, 18:55, 1 user, load average: 2.14, 1.45, 1.26
(and, for the curious):
vanboers@yuma:~$ top -b -n 1 | head -n 10 | tail -n 3
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
11967 vanboers 16 6 15076 10M 1364 R N 62.8 61.8 2832h setiathome
(what else you gonna do with a 486?)
Payola for simulated songs doesn't cost the artist as much as for the real ones...
Hypertext Markup Language... Text...
If people want to watch T.V., they should watch T.V. Browser technology with a decent soundcard might be good enough to hear an mp3, but that's about as far as I'd push it. There's no bandwidth; with isolated exceptions. Most people don't use DSL or Cable.
Lastly, the browsers bleed way to much about the person viewing the content than appropriate. At least Mozilla and Konqueror give you the ability to modify this behavior. If you turn off cookies and javascript and the site flips you the bird, you're an idiot to return.
If people insist on using I.E.; they're just populating corporate America's dbs. Why do you think corporate web-sites insist on I.E.? Perhaps their VBStudio.Net web developers don't know how to collect all that data using server-side programming techniques. People seem to be commited to visit these sites, anyway. If all sites eventually require I.E., then my bookmarks.html will finally be empty and I'll be able to just check my e-Mail and continue with my day.
Wonder what's on the tube...
"The only reason why I'm using windows is because MS office is still superior..."
Superior to what? My first glimpse / use of Excel (1.0? 2.2?) was on a Mac in '91. It worked great until Mac OS 6.5+ and Office 4.2 for productivity and back office tasks became far too buggy ('95?). Perhaps M$ Office was superior in '95, it's certainly not in 2002 ('02 for some).
Try doing a simple Excel spreadsheet to determine how much time elapsed between a couple dates. Copy a date formatted 'yyyy-mm-dd hh:nn:ss' into a cell and another to the right and attempt a simple =timevalue(a1)-timevalue(b1). You'll get #VALUE!. Seriusly; try it!
Now go into a shell (UNIX shell) and create a few rows of these types of dates in csv format, import and now your timevalue functions work. Don't even attempt copy-pasting from a netscape 6.2 browser to do this task.
Now try working with a Chart. Define a column of labels and a column of values and use the wizard. Then add a row. Now try and change the chart's row source by editing the property by hand and change the last row number. Won't work. Start dragging the data area with your mouse when the little pseudo-wizard prompts you to make changes to your chart area and voila! Everything works, now. Hmmmmmmm...
Point is, with each new release of Office, or anything M$ the box shrinks a little more. I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt. I wouldn't know since I've never seen or used that OS; feel free to correct me -- I'm sure I'll just have to take your word for it. Clearly, many things you used to do the hard way by hand-editing things within Office are no longer practical. I'm sure 95% of the people out there never had the desire / need to manipulate data source values for embedded charts either. Hell, probably less than that even new you could make a chart without the wizard. It's probably pointless to want to do such a thing.
Perhaps Office is superior to OpenOffice / StarOffice, but you have to ask for whom. I don't mind wizards, but making it so you can't use anything but is clearly the worst case of cattle-herding innovation destruction I can think of.
It's funny that I got off the Mac in 1995 and recommended Win 3.1 for all the business applications software needs at my job back then due to the frustration of the crashes and the utter lack of a command shell on Mac OS 6.5 to try and solve problems. Strange irony that Mac OS X is actually starting to show some adoption. I'd hate to see Palladium actually come to pass, because Linux has done some tremendously positive things to try and hold off the destruction of consumer control M$ has marketed so vehemently and successfully, but if it does -- a G4 is looking pretty good to me...
I haven't used Windows for my desktop since Slackware 3.0, but that's not very relevant anymore. As a songwriter trying to get my stuff heard I have to put it in a format that most people use to play such content: Windows users. So, if that's what my listeners will use (and, they clearly won't use anything else), that's the format I've been putting it in.
People can still get that content, but not for much longer without restrictions. Interesting thing is if I were lucky enough to get published I still wouldn't get more than 3% - 7% anyway. Most of it would go to whatever label/producer I signed over most of my rights to: Virgin, BMI, Epic, whoever. So, what do I care if my shit gets pirated.
So the only way to make a buck in this business is to drag my boards out to the clubs and play while my listeners have a few drinks and dance along. Far more pleasant than sitting in a dark room downloading Britney Spears mp3s, anyway.
Since we'll never own our machines anyway as these new laws to protect the RIAA, MPAA, and software companies get enacted, if you really want to make a statement, quit buying CD's at $20 a pop and go to an open mic, or bar and see real musicians play real music (except for Britney, of course). At least that way you can make sure artists are getting a few bucks for their efforts. Some of us actually make our own CD's and sell them to help us support ourselves, as well. You might even get to meet a real chick. >:)
Hope to see you out there...
Just a rough stab at British humour... Not very funny, I guess. >:)
Put the following in sshd_config:
Compression no
(How fast do you actually type, anyway?)
Or, just fix it yourself if you're uber. >:)
(Don't forget Compression no on linux-2.2.x)
In all seriousness, I'm curious... Running a virus scanner per chance on a regular (or irregular) basis?
'Fraid not... I started using Slackware when Win95 came out. Since I don't have total confidence that Norton and the like don't fuel their own industry I also don't recommend AV products to friends, or clients. My clients understand that if they get a virus from a word doc we're collaborating on, it's unlikely my Star Office 5.2 was responsible and they take the responsibility for their AV needs, if they think that stuff is important.
I've never run across a home PC user who wouldn't get by just as well with Slackware, FreeBSD, or Mac OS9 or X, either for their basic needs, but they all still use Windows regardless. My guess is because they don't sell anything else to home PC consumers in any retail outlets, but that is yet another story.
I can understand the frustrations with the Imacs, but take heart that the OS of the Apples has finally evolved into something that can endure beyond Jobs. Personally, I'm excited to see what the multimedia developers can produce with such a great OS/hardware combination. Imagine running a digital audio workstation that never crashes! But, of course it would need to be G4, or better...
"This guy is an uniformed idiot..."
How the hell do you know what this "idiot" is wearing???
From your post, it occurs to me your help-desk job keeps you too close to real "idiots" who appear (since you reference Klez) to get incessantly re-infected, and this probably manifests itself in your opinion that all these virus threats are real. Trust me, my mullet-donning friend; they are not. I can count on one hand the number of windows (or AOL) using "idiots" I've had to rescue from virus infections and probably most people (if not all) use Windows (and a third of them AOL). I definitely have more than five friends...
Michael's right: the AV companies spread FUD to increase profits. This should be obvious to anyone: whether they wear a uniform, or not.
Just give them all etcha-sketches. It would be cheaper and save you a lot of trouble.
Doesn't sound like they do anything important, anyway... >:)