I used avast! based on several other slashdotters' recommendations. I don't like it too much. I don't want an antivirus service to be constantly running and monitoring every data exchange. I prefer to manually scan a file whenever I download something sketchy. I am able to do this with Avast, but it wasn't easy to set up this way. Even when I disabled just about everything, it was still running as a service which I had to manually stop within the windows Service Manager admin tool.
Despite that minor inconvenience, it's still better than McAfee or Norton however.
I have never run virus protection software on my computer in the five years that I've owned it. After the recent installation of Avast, I did a scan and not to my surprise there were only two 'viruses' found. Both of them were in modified DLLs related to a Zone Alarm installer that I downloaded from P2P but never installed. Firefox, a firewall, and a little common sense can keep you spyware/adware/virus free.
My first thought when I saw the headline was "are they selling AAC or MP3 files?"
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing they're going with DRMed WMA files. Does anyone actually use WMA besides Napster and Microsoft? I have a lot of idiot friends who don't know how to use computers and they ripped their CD collections into WMA because it was default encoder in MediaPlayer. As soon as they bought iPods, they had to re-rip their CD collections as MP3.
Now that's an idea! Instead of using a CF microdrives in your Digital SLR cameras use, simply attach a removable Hard Drive or even an iPod. I would imagine that 1 or 2 GB is less than ideal when you want to take more than a few 10 Megapixel RAW photos.
Can any digital camera currently on the market write to an external USB device? Most have some USB capability so you can transfer photos to your PC without removing the memory card, but can that same interface/connection be used to write to an external drive [without any hacks]?
Is there any insight as to what the Revolution is using? Is Nintendo going to use standard media like a DVD, or are they going with an oddly sized proprietary format?
If they haven't released that info yet, I guess one advantage for them is that they can wait and see what happens with the format wars before making a commitment.
Here are some of my opinions:
If the XBOX 360 can't be hacked as easily as the original XBOX, it doesn't stand a chance against the PS3. Almost everyone I know currently owns multiple systems, and those with only one system have a PS2. Personally, I'm looking forward to the Revolution for the same reason that many of the/. Nintendo fanboys always give: Nintendo makes fun games.
Do professional investors really give out good advice, or are they trying to get other people to make bad financial decisions for their own personal gain?
I hear real estate agents all over the place saying "now is an excellent time to buy real estate because interest rates are still historically low, and housing isn't like the stock market where people can quickly sell off." Of course it's an excellent time for someone to buy an overpriced house when you're the one selling it to them, especially considering the 6% commission you get.
I'm having a hard time understanding how 'average' people afford homes in hot markets. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the average home price is around $750,000. What's the average salary? Google and Yahoo pay well but not enough to afford a $750,000 house, even if there are two people in a household earning the same salary. I heard a general guideline that your house should be no more than two and a half times your gross salary. That means that you'd need roughly $300,000 a year to buy an average house. Do most households in the Bay Area make that kind of money? I think I'm doing fairly well, but I couldn't afford something like that. Am I just grossly underpaid, or are people crazy?
Are we going to see a lot of defaulting mortgages in 3-5 years when these silly interest-only periods expire and principal has to be repaid?
I just set up a friend's PSP to use his wireless access point that I configured. First, the PSP doesn't do 802.11G, it only does B, so I had to set the router to use B and G. For a while, I wasn't able to configure it because the older PSP firmware only supported WEP, but there's now an upgrade that supports WPA.
Unfortunately, one of the games we tried to play online doesn't like WPA. The PSP can access the router just fine and the internal browser works, however the game itself won't use that connection. That particular configured connection is grayed out, where two other connections that use WEP work just fine.
Wow! To go from almost having a H1 and a brand new home to that, how did you mentally make it through all of that? Are you being serious? Hopefully you're doing OK for yourself now.
I get discouraged when I hear of many friends who already (three years out of college) own homes and have no debt other than their mortgage. I have a few thousand in credit card debt, NO home, and a miniscule savings account and I feel bad about it, but I guess it could be worse.
Now that I think about it, shortly after I got married my wife was laid off. I managed to support the both of us on my salary alone (continuing to live the same lifestyle), which helps explain the situation.
but you're betting that a greater fool will come before then and buy the stock for more than you paid
That sounds like the real-estate craze that's going on. Everyone's rushing to buy overpriced real estate (at least in NY and LA metro areas where I live), including a ton of amateurs who are hoping to get rich quickly. The problem is they're coming late in the game with NO experience.
I heard a real estate analyst say that you know things are approaching a breaking point when you hear grocery store clerks and postal employees giving real estate investment advice. That same analyst also compared the real estate market to a game of polo - there's a game being played by professionals, then a bunch of amateurs rush onto the field throwing their mallets around recklessly, taking down themselves and some of the seasoned professionals.
If Apple doesn't ship Intel Powerbooks now, these users are going to be waiting, because they certainly aren't going to buy G4 powerbooks unless they absolutely have to.
I'm trying to figure out why anyone would buy a Mac right now, unless they absolutely needed it. I'm in the market for a Mac. Right around the time I was ready to buy a Mac Mini, they announced the switch to Intel processors. I don't NEED it right now, so I'm going to wait.
I believe Sanyo only makes CDMA phones, though I could be wrong. I like my phone a lot, but the only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have a SIM card.
The real reason I moved back to Firefox after I tried Opera (and I gave it a good month) was because one day, Gmail just stopped working. On different days, both at work and at home, I could not log back into Gmail no matter what I did (short of reinstalling Opera, because I'm just too lazy to do that). This also happened to a coworker; he switched back too.
Same here. I actually have Opera and Firefox installed on my machine. I *try* to use Opera since it sounds promising, but it always fails on Javascript. Gmail doesn't work correctly all the time. Just yesterday Yahoo! mail wasn't rendering properly - the buttons were overlapping the body text in my email, and none of the button functions worked either. The biggest reason I don't use Opera is because a website my wife needs to use for work won't render properly. Again, it's a javascript error; a js menubar with pulldowns doesn't display properly.
Firefox crashes on me a lot, especially when I have too many tabs open. 9 times out of 10, Firefox 'crashes' when I close it. Instead of closing normally, an error message occurs stating that there was a problem (not sure of the specific wording, but it doesn't close properly). It's normally not a big deal since I'm closing it anyway, but it's still not very tidy.
Wishlist for a mobile phone for people who really use the thing professionaly:
1. Can call with it and has good sound
2. Carkit/headset
3. Good battery life
4. Sturdy
5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
6. Normal size and lightweight
I have a phone that meets those specs. It's the Sanyo VI-2300. It has excellent call quality, it's a decent size, it's pretty durable (has survived several drops onto concrete), has excellent battery life (recharge it every 2-3 days or so) and it has a few extra features that I actually use like speakerphone and web browser. Just about every time I'm in a different city, I use Google Local to find the exact address/phone number (and a map!) of a store or restaurant I'm trying to find.
An even simpler phone is the Sanyo "Voice Phone 200". It appears to look just like the VI-2300, but doesn't have the Sprint Vision features. I'm not exactly sure what Sprint's 'Vision' is all about, but I think it's just the ability to download games, wallpaper, and polyphonic ringtones.
Wow! That looks almost exactly like a post I made to slashdot a few months ago. I work in defense too. At my old location, cell phones were allowed but camera phones were prohibited so I bought a new phone without a camera. Shortly afterward, I started working on another project in a facility with no restrictions on cameras. Now I'm working in a facility where all cell phones are prohibited (cameras or not).
Despite being 'stuck' without a cameraphone, I'm not disappointed at all. Even when I had a camera phone, I only used it the first month or two that I owned it. I usually carry around a Canon SD300 (not at work though!), which is a 4MP digicam that's smaller than my cellphone and takes better pictures than any cellphone camera.
Hmm.. that's not the case with EZ-Pass (the RFID Toll Tag system in use throughout the Northeast - PA/NY/NJ/MA/DE and a few other states).
I moved to NJ from CA. I registered my EZ-Pass using my California license plate number. Shortly afterward I got NJ license plates and now almost a year later I still haven't updated my license plate number to correspond with my EZ-Pass transmitter ID. I also frequently take my tag out and use it in friends' vehicles when we're going to NYC to save some time at the tunnels. My account gets charged each and every time without any problems
I don't like the idea that I can be tracked, but without EZ-Pass I'd be wasting 20 minutes or more at the toll booths. I'll trade a little anonymity for a little convenience. My biggest concern is that speed is being actively monitored. It's quite easy to determine whether or not someone is speeding. I frequently travel 75MPH in a 55MPH zone, however most other cars are going 80 or more. Other times when there's traffic I'm going 10MPH, so I guess if they take my average speed over the course of a few months they'll see that I'm going well below the speed limit.
Absolutely not! If you're underage and your parents give you alcohol even in your own home, they can be cited with furnishing alcohol to a minor (if they get caught). If you're not 21, no drinky for you under any circumstances. Not too long ago (a decade or two ago) I know of several states that had their drinking age set at 18 but as of lately all 50 of the United States it's 21. In the US territory of Guam, you can drink at 18 (I don't know about Puerto Rico or other US Territories).
The way I see it is that if you can join the military and vote, you should be able to legally drink. The problem is that so many American kids have irresponsible parents who don't teach responsible behavior. I never drank when I was in High School only beacause of fear of getting charged with underage drinking (little did I know that you can get away with practically anything when you're still a minor!). I've been to several parties where people drank and I still had good times.
I guess my parents were responsible - they always informed me about alcohol and told me that if I ever happened to be out somewhere and get drunk I could always call them for a ride, and I wouldn't get into any trouble. I had no interest in drinking while in high school, but that changed when I went to college. Even then, I never went overboard. Sure I've been very drunk, but never to the point where I don't remember doing something.
I just picked up a Seagate 120GB 7200RPM hard drive from Best Buy for $39.99, with no rebates. I only wish I had gotten two now. Then again, I don't think my motherboard supports RAID.
Ah... I was just using Adblock, which has some "flash overlay" option that disables flash whenever I set it. Flashblock is what I'm looking for. Thanks!
I didn't feel like Reading TFA, but the OP says "advertising with logos and graphics". I don't imagine Google will fill their space with annoying ads (though anything is possible). I'm thinking they'll use corporate logos near their search results, perhaps all being a fixed size to give a uniform appearance, sort of like icons. Consistent patterns of logos/icons wouldn't be too annoying for most people.
I still don't like seeing corporate logos all over the place (whether on the Web or in the physical world we live), so whatever Google uses it'll be adblocked here.
How? I couldn't figure out how to do that, or how to block flash. When I get an annoying flash ad, I choose the "overlay flash" option, but it's only set for that browser session. I'd like to permanently disable all flash and only allow certain things that I want to see. I'd also like to eliminate google ads.
People would have a fit if the government banned every news channel but Fox News, and every store but Walmart. But two-tiered internet will do just that. Combine that with the monopolies already in place, and the Consumer loses choice.
That's an interesting analogy. Unfortunatly when it comes to anything technology related, the majority of people making laws or other important decisions simply do not understand enough about what they're doing.
There's a Taiwanese snack that I enjoy, and the only English on the package is a single sentence (?) that says "MTV Disco Fashion Cry Smile Happy Sad Good Bad"
I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with vanilla wafer rolls.
I just read somewhere yesterday that Ford's Corporate Average Fuel Economy is lower than the original Model T. They're the worst in the auto industry. Ford is now trying to project a 'green' earth-friendly image by bragging about better fuel economy, but now they're quitely going to offer another mega SUV called the Expedition EL (with a comparable Lincoln version) to compete with the Suburban (and Escalade).
All automakers are guilty when it comes to making gas guzzlers. They're just making what people want. As green an image as Toyota is trying to project, they still make gas guzzling Tundras, Sequoia, 4Runners, Tacomas, (Lexus) GX, (Lexus) LX.
Honda acts somewhat responsibly and hasn't (until lately) really given in. I know Honda's always had the Passport SUV, but it was never very popular. Now they offer the good selling Pilot and Ridgeline which are gas guzzlers. The one thing about Honda though is that they still don't make a V8 despite all their competition doing so (however they DO make a 3.5L V8 with 300HP in the Acura RL).
A turbocharger uses some wasted energy to force more air into the engine, which allows more fuel to be burned, which produces more power. You're not using that wasted energy to power the vehicle, so there are no fuel efficiency improvements.
A turbocharger doesn't provide any more fuel efficiency, however it allows a small engine to produce a lot more power. The nice thing about turbochargers it is that when they're not producing a lot of boost, you get the efficiency of a naturally aspirated engine of the same size.
The thing I liked most about my turbocharged 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse is that while cruising on the highway at a steady speed, it was like any car with a normal 2.0L engine. I regularly got 30MPG. On city streets it was a different story! I drove aggressively, trying to accelerate as quickly as possibly which would give me fuel economy of about 10MPG or less, though I could run a 1/4 mile in under 13.5 - not bad for a ten year old (at the time) four cylinder!
"It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works."
Slashdot Mirror
I have never run virus protection software on my computer in the five years that I've owned it. After the recent installation of Avast, I did a scan and not to my surprise there were only two 'viruses' found. Both of them were in modified DLLs related to a Zone Alarm installer that I downloaded from P2P but never installed. Firefox, a firewall, and a little common sense can keep you spyware/adware/virus free.
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing they're going with DRMed WMA files. Does anyone actually use WMA besides Napster and Microsoft? I have a lot of idiot friends who don't know how to use computers and they ripped their CD collections into WMA because it was default encoder in MediaPlayer. As soon as they bought iPods, they had to re-rip their CD collections as MP3.
Can any digital camera currently on the market write to an external USB device? Most have some USB capability so you can transfer photos to your PC without removing the memory card, but can that same interface/connection be used to write to an external drive [without any hacks]?
If they haven't released that info yet, I guess one advantage for them is that they can wait and see what happens with the format wars before making a commitment.
Here are some of my opinions: /. Nintendo fanboys always give: Nintendo makes fun games.
If the XBOX 360 can't be hacked as easily as the original XBOX, it doesn't stand a chance against the PS3. Almost everyone I know currently owns multiple systems, and those with only one system have a PS2. Personally, I'm looking forward to the Revolution for the same reason that many of the
I hear real estate agents all over the place saying "now is an excellent time to buy real estate because interest rates are still historically low, and housing isn't like the stock market where people can quickly sell off." Of course it's an excellent time for someone to buy an overpriced house when you're the one selling it to them, especially considering the 6% commission you get.
I'm having a hard time understanding how 'average' people afford homes in hot markets. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the average home price is around $750,000. What's the average salary? Google and Yahoo pay well but not enough to afford a $750,000 house, even if there are two people in a household earning the same salary. I heard a general guideline that your house should be no more than two and a half times your gross salary. That means that you'd need roughly $300,000 a year to buy an average house. Do most households in the Bay Area make that kind of money? I think I'm doing fairly well, but I couldn't afford something like that. Am I just grossly underpaid, or are people crazy?
Are we going to see a lot of defaulting mortgages in 3-5 years when these silly interest-only periods expire and principal has to be repaid?
Unfortunately, one of the games we tried to play online doesn't like WPA. The PSP can access the router just fine and the internal browser works, however the game itself won't use that connection. That particular configured connection is grayed out, where two other connections that use WEP work just fine.
I get discouraged when I hear of many friends who already (three years out of college) own homes and have no debt other than their mortgage. I have a few thousand in credit card debt, NO home, and a miniscule savings account and I feel bad about it, but I guess it could be worse.
Now that I think about it, shortly after I got married my wife was laid off. I managed to support the both of us on my salary alone (continuing to live the same lifestyle), which helps explain the situation.
That sounds like the real-estate craze that's going on. Everyone's rushing to buy overpriced real estate (at least in NY and LA metro areas where I live), including a ton of amateurs who are hoping to get rich quickly. The problem is they're coming late in the game with NO experience.
I heard a real estate analyst say that you know things are approaching a breaking point when you hear grocery store clerks and postal employees giving real estate investment advice. That same analyst also compared the real estate market to a game of polo - there's a game being played by professionals, then a bunch of amateurs rush onto the field throwing their mallets around recklessly, taking down themselves and some of the seasoned professionals.
I'm trying to figure out why anyone would buy a Mac right now, unless they absolutely needed it. I'm in the market for a Mac. Right around the time I was ready to buy a Mac Mini, they announced the switch to Intel processors. I don't NEED it right now, so I'm going to wait.
I believe Sanyo only makes CDMA phones, though I could be wrong. I like my phone a lot, but the only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have a SIM card.
That sounds a lot more fun than "bathroom break"
Same here. I actually have Opera and Firefox installed on my machine. I *try* to use Opera since it sounds promising, but it always fails on Javascript. Gmail doesn't work correctly all the time. Just yesterday Yahoo! mail wasn't rendering properly - the buttons were overlapping the body text in my email, and none of the button functions worked either. The biggest reason I don't use Opera is because a website my wife needs to use for work won't render properly. Again, it's a javascript error; a js menubar with pulldowns doesn't display properly.
Firefox crashes on me a lot, especially when I have too many tabs open. 9 times out of 10, Firefox 'crashes' when I close it. Instead of closing normally, an error message occurs stating that there was a problem (not sure of the specific wording, but it doesn't close properly). It's normally not a big deal since I'm closing it anyway, but it's still not very tidy.
1. Can call with it and has good sound
2. Carkit/headset
3. Good battery life
4. Sturdy
5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
6. Normal size and lightweight
I have a phone that meets those specs. It's the Sanyo VI-2300. It has excellent call quality, it's a decent size, it's pretty durable (has survived several drops onto concrete), has excellent battery life (recharge it every 2-3 days or so) and it has a few extra features that I actually use like speakerphone and web browser. Just about every time I'm in a different city, I use Google Local to find the exact address/phone number (and a map!) of a store or restaurant I'm trying to find.
An even simpler phone is the Sanyo "Voice Phone 200". It appears to look just like the VI-2300, but doesn't have the Sprint Vision features. I'm not exactly sure what Sprint's 'Vision' is all about, but I think it's just the ability to download games, wallpaper, and polyphonic ringtones.
Despite being 'stuck' without a cameraphone, I'm not disappointed at all. Even when I had a camera phone, I only used it the first month or two that I owned it. I usually carry around a Canon SD300 (not at work though!), which is a 4MP digicam that's smaller than my cellphone and takes better pictures than any cellphone camera.
I moved to NJ from CA. I registered my EZ-Pass using my California license plate number. Shortly afterward I got NJ license plates and now almost a year later I still haven't updated my license plate number to correspond with my EZ-Pass transmitter ID. I also frequently take my tag out and use it in friends' vehicles when we're going to NYC to save some time at the tunnels. My account gets charged each and every time without any problems
I don't like the idea that I can be tracked, but without EZ-Pass I'd be wasting 20 minutes or more at the toll booths. I'll trade a little anonymity for a little convenience. My biggest concern is that speed is being actively monitored. It's quite easy to determine whether or not someone is speeding. I frequently travel 75MPH in a 55MPH zone, however most other cars are going 80 or more. Other times when there's traffic I'm going 10MPH, so I guess if they take my average speed over the course of a few months they'll see that I'm going well below the speed limit.
The way I see it is that if you can join the military and vote, you should be able to legally drink. The problem is that so many American kids have irresponsible parents who don't teach responsible behavior. I never drank when I was in High School only beacause of fear of getting charged with underage drinking (little did I know that you can get away with practically anything when you're still a minor!). I've been to several parties where people drank and I still had good times.
I guess my parents were responsible - they always informed me about alcohol and told me that if I ever happened to be out somewhere and get drunk I could always call them for a ride, and I wouldn't get into any trouble. I had no interest in drinking while in high school, but that changed when I went to college. Even then, I never went overboard. Sure I've been very drunk, but never to the point where I don't remember doing something.
I just picked up a Seagate 120GB 7200RPM hard drive from Best Buy for $39.99, with no rebates. I only wish I had gotten two now. Then again, I don't think my motherboard supports RAID.
Ah... I was just using Adblock, which has some "flash overlay" option that disables flash whenever I set it. Flashblock is what I'm looking for. Thanks!
I still don't like seeing corporate logos all over the place (whether on the Web or in the physical world we live), so whatever Google uses it'll be adblocked here.
How? I couldn't figure out how to do that, or how to block flash. When I get an annoying flash ad, I choose the "overlay flash" option, but it's only set for that browser session. I'd like to permanently disable all flash and only allow certain things that I want to see. I'd also like to eliminate google ads.
That's an interesting analogy. Unfortunatly when it comes to anything technology related, the majority of people making laws or other important decisions simply do not understand enough about what they're doing.
I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with vanilla wafer rolls.
All automakers are guilty when it comes to making gas guzzlers. They're just making what people want. As green an image as Toyota is trying to project, they still make gas guzzling Tundras, Sequoia, 4Runners, Tacomas, (Lexus) GX, (Lexus) LX.
Honda acts somewhat responsibly and hasn't (until lately) really given in. I know Honda's always had the Passport SUV, but it was never very popular. Now they offer the good selling Pilot and Ridgeline which are gas guzzlers. The one thing about Honda though is that they still don't make a V8 despite all their competition doing so (however they DO make a 3.5L V8 with 300HP in the Acura RL).
A turbocharger doesn't provide any more fuel efficiency, however it allows a small engine to produce a lot more power. The nice thing about turbochargers it is that when they're not producing a lot of boost, you get the efficiency of a naturally aspirated engine of the same size.
The thing I liked most about my turbocharged 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse is that while cruising on the highway at a steady speed, it was like any car with a normal 2.0L engine. I regularly got 30MPG. On city streets it was a different story! I drove aggressively, trying to accelerate as quickly as possibly which would give me fuel economy of about 10MPG or less, though I could run a 1/4 mile in under 13.5 - not bad for a ten year old (at the time) four cylinder!
"It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works."