Lots of folks have perfectly working hardware, but software that's horribly out of date and unsecured. I deal with this on an almost daily basis, and it just plain sucks. I'd say close to 90% of the machines still running win9x (in the home environment) are older machines that kids/grandkids gave to their older relatives so they could get on AOL or some other proprietary ISP (dreamscape, netzero, yada yada) and use email and surf. There is no AOL client for Linux. There area couple dialers out there, but they are _not_ AOL, and don't even come close to giving the user the experience they're used to. It's a damn shame that one of the more desktop oriented Linux distros out there won't partner up with AOL or something and get a damn decent client up and running. Some have half-heartedly tried to brand one of the open source dialers out there, but it's just not AOL. Sure, it probably wouldn't be open source, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.
The biggest hurdle after AOL is winmodems. Whoever came up with that idea should be shot and spit on.
It's rather ironic that, in school, you supposedly get taught about the United States Constitution in a place where it's rights do not apply to you. The only other such places besides schools are military bases, and prisons. Oh, and "free speech zones".
"SO, HERE I AM, sitting in a jet at 34,000 feet someplace above God-only-knows-where, using my computer and minding my own business when Microsoft threatens to essentially shut down my copy of Office. And at the very start of a week-long business trip, too."
And this coming from one of the biggest Microsoft schill sites on the planet.
George Carlin's been ranting about it for a couple of decades. He call's it the "pussification of America". AKA "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!11tilde1!!~~!!!!WTFBBQ!!!!!"
Modded informative? pfffffffft. I guess it's time for me to pull out my "Certs don't mean jack" story here once again.
Since my sister lives several hundred miles away, I'm saved from most "family tech support issues". Her Win98 computer wasn't running so fast a few years back, so she decided to add more ram to it to speed things up. Her husband took it to his "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" to get the job done. "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" proceeded to drop a screwdriver onto the mobo when it was powered up, toasting it, of course. He had the nerve to charge them for a new motherboard, but at least the ram got installed. I was visiting a couple of months later when my sister mentioned that she couldn't get any sound when she tried to play a CD. As I was already almost seething when she'd told me about the motherboard, I figured I knew exactly what the deal was. I peered in through the back to, sure enough, see that "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" hadn't reconnected the CD audio cable and it was just dangling there. I then grabbed a screwdriver to open the case to connect the cable. Seems "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" lost the case screws, so "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" POP-RIVETED THE GOD DAMN CASE SHUT. Another half hour, a drill, and migraine later, she once again had CD audio working.
So, yes... certs might look good on paper, but they don't mean jack when it comes to knowledge.
I know "protecting the children" is a cliche, but doesn't it kind of apply here?
No, because that's not about "protecting the children" at all. It's about the "camp" covering its ass so it doesn't end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit once pics/video of what _really_ goes on there surface.
...It's no secret that Windows admins have a harder time with Linux and I agree something needs to be done to help them (us) take the plunge with confidence...
You know what? There is something that's been done. You can actually download just about every Linux distro... for free... and educate yourself instead of bitching and whining "It's too hard! I can't do it!". It doesn't cost you umpteen thousands of dollars to purchase the server OS, just takes an hour or 3 on a decent pipe and blank cd or 3. Most competant linux admins have done so, even if it's to set up a server situation on some age-old hardware they have lying around to learn how to do things. Also, doing so on older hardware usually forces them to learn how to make the installed server OS more streamlined and efficient so that they can do more with the hardware they have on hand.
I for one, have single-handedly set up a local library with a 500MHz Pentium/256 meg ram that handles all their database and file server needs. I did a testbed on a 233 I had sitting in a closet and had everything down to the tweaked config files ready to go over a month before the project came into fruition. The cost to the library was a 128 meg stick of ram and a 100G hard drive, since I donated my time to them, and they already had the other hardware. I'd never set up a system exactly like that, and it's worked perfectly for them for the last 6 months, with zero downtime. Took me about 3 days to figure out packages and tweaks for their particular needs. Onsite, it took me about an hour from blank hard drive to them being in full production. They put about $200 into it, and it replaced an aging "server" some salesmen had sold the county for about $3000 that they'd never been able to keep up and running for more than a week on their own.
Can't do Linux? Download it and learn yourself. Anything less is just excuses.
It would beat the hell out of an government full of negligent cronyism, criminals, and that uses its military to invade a sovereign nation as an investment scam for Haliburton and the Carlyle Group.
Their reputation as an anti-virus provider used to be second to none...
Methinks you're referring to _Norton_, not Symantec. Symantec has a habit of buying products that are really decent (think Norton Utils, Atguard, etc.) and bloating them all to hell and back and making them consume most of a machine's resources just to run. You know... like a virus might.
That the US as a whole doesn't seem to give a shit about this....
The US government must think that Americans are lazy, brainless sheep who will shut out even the most obvious evidence that criminals are running the country. I mean seriously, only the most idiotic... Oh look! American Idol is on!
Last thing they want to do is lose all that money they are going to in a clear-cut 1st amendment case...
It's rather ironic that, in school, you supposedly get taught about the United States Constitution in a place where it's rights do not apply to you. The only other such places besides schools are military bases, and prisons. Oh, and "free speech zones".
Slashdot Mirror
is how I tagged this story. For the rest of this post, see the sig.
...most folks don't even realize they're installing 18 separate patches for a given month...
At least, those actually with broadband.
cold solder joints?
It doesn't spell check the entire page, it's for text input forms.
A
O
L
Lots of folks have perfectly working hardware, but software that's horribly out of date and unsecured. I deal with this on an almost daily basis, and it just plain sucks.
I'd say close to 90% of the machines still running win9x (in the home environment) are older machines that kids/grandkids gave to their older relatives so they could get on AOL or some other proprietary ISP (dreamscape, netzero, yada yada) and use email and surf.
There is no AOL client for Linux. There area couple dialers out there, but they are _not_ AOL, and don't even come close to giving the user the experience they're used to. It's a damn shame that one of the more desktop oriented Linux distros out there won't partner up with AOL or something and get a damn decent client up and running. Some have half-heartedly tried to brand one of the open source dialers out there, but it's just not AOL. Sure, it probably wouldn't be open source, but at least it would be a step in the right direction.
The biggest hurdle after AOL is winmodems. Whoever came up with that idea should be shot and spit on.
It's rather ironic that, in school, you supposedly get taught about the United States Constitution in a place where it's rights do not apply to you. The only other such places besides schools are military bases, and prisons.
Oh, and "free speech zones".
Tell that to David Coursey.
"SO, HERE I AM, sitting in a jet at 34,000 feet someplace above God-only-knows-where, using my computer and minding my own business when Microsoft threatens to essentially shut down my copy of Office. And at the very start of a week-long business trip, too."
And this coming from one of the biggest Microsoft schill sites on the planet.
Also funny is the fact that SCO doesn't show up in any of the "Top Categories" or "Popular Categories" listed there.
George Carlin's been ranting about it for a couple of decades. He call's it the "pussification of America". AKA "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!11tilde1!!~~!!!!WTFBBQ!!!!!"
Because it was Windows 98. DAE wasn't available until 98se.
tell the RIAA that they're sending out mp3s...
or tell the FCC that they're sending out pictures of boobies...
that'll get something done about it.
Modded informative? pfffffffft.
I guess it's time for me to pull out my "Certs don't mean jack" story here once again.
Since my sister lives several hundred miles away, I'm saved from most "family tech support issues". Her Win98 computer wasn't running so fast a few years back, so she decided to add more ram to it to speed things up. Her husband took it to his "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" to get the job done.
"MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" proceeded to drop a screwdriver onto the mobo when it was powered up, toasting it, of course. He had the nerve to charge them for a new motherboard, but at least the ram got installed.
I was visiting a couple of months later when my sister mentioned that she couldn't get any sound when she tried to play a CD. As I was already almost seething when she'd told me about the motherboard, I figured I knew exactly what the deal was. I peered in through the back to, sure enough, see that "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" hadn't reconnected the CD audio cable and it was just dangling there. I then grabbed a screwdriver to open the case to connect the cable.
Seems "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" lost the case screws, so "MCSE & A+ Certified buddy at work(TM)" POP-RIVETED THE GOD DAMN CASE SHUT.
Another half hour, a drill, and migraine later, she once again had CD audio working.
So, yes... certs might look good on paper, but they don't mean jack when it comes to knowledge.
It looks like one of those awful "...for Dummies" books.
Why do microsoft bods keep using the term 'rich' to descibe their technology?
I can think of 50 BILLION reasons why.
Its easy to point the finger and cry that they lied, but is it really a lie if they didn't know any better?
Does that make it any less bullshit?
I know "protecting the children" is a cliche, but doesn't it kind of apply here?
No, because that's not about "protecting the children" at all. It's about the "camp" covering its ass so it doesn't end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit once pics/video of what _really_ goes on there surface.
Lets just put all kids and their parents in prisons and call it even.
This is the USA... we're working on it.
I am shocked... SHOCKED that you'd actually expect elected representatives to actually represent their constiuents.
How silly of you.
I'm afraid _nothing_ will make me look thin in these pants :o(
...It's no secret that Windows admins have a harder time with Linux and I agree something needs to be done to help them (us) take the plunge with confidence...
... and educate yourself instead of bitching and whining "It's too hard! I can't do it!". It doesn't cost you umpteen thousands of dollars to purchase the server OS, just takes an hour or 3 on a decent pipe and blank cd or 3.
You know what?
There is something that's been done.
You can actually download just about every Linux distro... for free
Most competant linux admins have done so, even if it's to set up a server situation on some age-old hardware they have lying around to learn how to do things. Also, doing so on older hardware usually forces them to learn how to make the installed server OS more streamlined and efficient so that they can do more with the hardware they have on hand.
I for one, have single-handedly set up a local library with a 500MHz Pentium/256 meg ram that handles all their database and file server needs. I did a testbed on a 233 I had sitting in a closet and had everything down to the tweaked config files ready to go over a month before the project came into fruition. The cost to the library was a 128 meg stick of ram and a 100G hard drive, since I donated my time to them, and they already had the other hardware.
I'd never set up a system exactly like that, and it's worked perfectly for them for the last 6 months, with zero downtime. Took me about 3 days to figure out packages and tweaks for their particular needs. Onsite, it took me about an hour from blank hard drive to them being in full production. They put about $200 into it, and it replaced an aging "server" some salesmen had sold the county for about $3000 that they'd never been able to keep up and running for more than a week on their own.
Can't do Linux? Download it and learn yourself. Anything less is just excuses.
It would beat the hell out of an government full of negligent cronyism, criminals, and that uses its military to invade a sovereign nation as an investment scam for Haliburton and the Carlyle Group.
Their reputation as an anti-virus provider used to be second to none...
Methinks you're referring to _Norton_, not Symantec. Symantec has a habit of buying products that are really decent (think Norton Utils, Atguard, etc.) and bloating them all to hell and back and making them consume most of a machine's resources just to run. You know... like a virus might.
That the US as a whole doesn't seem to give a shit about this....
The US government must think that Americans are lazy, brainless sheep who will shut out even the most obvious evidence that criminals are running the country. I mean seriously, only the most idiotic... Oh look! American Idol is on!
Last thing they want to do is lose all that money they are going to in a clear-cut 1st amendment case...
It's rather ironic that, in school, you supposedly get taught about the United States Constitution in a place where it's rights do not apply to you. The only other such places besides schools are military bases, and prisons.
Oh, and "free speech zones".
They can just run it off a thumbdrive ;o)