I take it you haven't tried it? I've found it actually uses less resources than MSE, as it doesn't use the extra shields if you aren't running an app that would require them. For example no P2P app? No P2P shield running. Its defaults are pretty much "plug and play" and the only thing I ask folks is if they want the voice or not. Some think its cool that Avast will "talk" instead of beeping and bonging when it finds something, others prefer the quiet of a pop up only.
So you should really give it a try, its free, its easy, doesn't slam the CPU, all in all a nice app. And I don't think we are giving the same advice as I've found MSE to be more like ClamWin whereas Avast is more like a HIPS system. With MSE it won't say anything if you have missed a scan, hell it won't say anything if you don't update it for several days either if you have the notification not set to always be visible in Vista/7 whereas Avast will tell you with a pop up and voice if you'd like "I'm not able to update, please check connection" or "Your regular scan was missed, would you like to run it now?" I've also noticed that MSE, at least in my experience, isn't really great at dealing with JavaScript nastiness, whereas Avast works like a HIPS and scans the page BEFORE it loads, thus keeping drive bys away. It is a subtle difference but an important one IMHO.
Here is one I have found to be VERY true...."Good enough is more than enough for most folks" which I have found time after time after time to be true. After the Intel bribery and compiler scandals came out I switched to nothing but AMD for my shop. Did anyone notice? They noticed the lower prices, that is about it.
That final 10% in speed that so many pay 40% or more to get frankly is never noticed by a good 90% of the population. And I've found this to be true for desktops, laptops, mobile, you name it. Once you get to a certain point, the "good enough" point, anything faster the users won't notice because the work they have simply isn't using it or allowing them to "feel" the difference to justify the price. I still have a couple of gamer customers who do their shopping with me based on what the benchmarks say this week, but the rest? They would be better off spending their money on other components, like a larger drive or SSD.
I have a feeling that we are gonna be seeing PC purchases put off for longer and longer simply because most folks can't tell the difference between their dual core with 2Gb and an octacore with 8Gb simply because most of their time is spent in Youtube, FB, chat, little popcap games, hell even I'm happy with my three year old AMD 925 quad and HD4850, and I used to change that stuff every year. For the jobs most of us have good enough is more than enough and spending more is simply a waste.
Hell my most popular thing ATM? A $150 7 inch Android pad. Sure most here would consider those CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) but with the females that are buying these things up? For what they want to do with them, which is check their mail, read eBooks while their kids play in the park, maybe a little chat, it is "good enough" and does what they want. So for them spending $500 on an iPad would simply be a waste, as they'd never use the features or hit the CPU and RAM hard enough for it to make a difference. It all comes down to the jobs you have for the device and for most even the lower end is beyond "good enough" nowadays.
Thank you. I don't know why in the hell the guy would think "breaching charge" because I thought I was pretty clear when I said explode it was like "Blam!"as they slammed the door open and suddenly there are a dozen feds in full body armor and helmets with M16s right in my face. I thought the poor kid behind the counter was gonna piss himself.
The funny part was the lead fed was actually annoyed at first that I wasn't sitting there shaking in my boots. I told him "I used to play three nights a week behind chicken wire. You do that for 6 months and you'll find you just don't startle easily anymore." But once he saw my card and saw I wasn't gonna act like an asshole or smart mouth him he was actually really decent about the whole thing. He let me stand there and watch them load up the gear, let me check out one of the counterfeit boxes of each version (like I said the Win98 and Win2K were spot on, I'd have never known, the hologram on XP was iffy though) and was even nice enough to tell me that there was gonna be a police auction of one of his partners (my boss ended up with a trailer load of nice parts and PCs they'd been using for their operation) and all and all was pretty decent about the whole thing. Just not the way one would expect to spend a Tuesday you know?
Allow me to agree and disagree. yes to being a pro, and I have never EVER looked at someone's files (I go so far as to tell them if they want me to back up their files they should be aware I may see file names during the backup so please don't be asking me to back up funky files) but as far as MSE? Meh.
It is great if you already know what you are doing and aren't going to any dodgy sites, but home users? Avast free is a better choice, as it has web shield which scans pages before they load and will strip out nasty scripts like drive bys, has P2P and messenger protection, all in all I'd say it is a better AV and with both being 100% free (I'd never give a customer trialware crap) why not use the better solution?
As far as NTBackup? If you want built in Windows 7 imaging backup is fine, personally I prefer to give my customers the free Paragon backup and recovery. Its solid, its free, it is reliable, it gives you a live CD option if the machine ever gets borked beyond booting, and if the customer has a USB HDD I'm happy to set it up to backup to it so they don't have to worry about HDD failures.
I used to have this argument with my former boss all the time. he was one of those "give them just enough rope" types, that wouldn't patch it, no AV, just clean it, so they'd get boned later and have to pay him again, whereas I believe I've done my job if the ONLY reason they have to come to me is they want to upgrade the hardware. I give them either Dragon or Firefox for a browser, put in ABP so they don't get ads (which are a big source of infection) give them a full AV, I even ask if they'd like the "full package" at no extra charge and if they say yes they get the latest Flash, Klite codec so they can play any format, and Libre Office so they can edit word docs, and a PDF reader (Foxit) along with a PDF printer so they can easily save files offline without printing. Thanks to Ninite it takes no real time from me and gives them a nicer PC
Between that and Comodo time machine which lets them just push F11 if they ever screw up the boot to restore from there, otherwise they can restore straight from Windows, makes it pretty damned hard to screw up a machine that I fixed. Sure I don't see these people again hardly ever, but I get enough referrals from their friends and family they send by to make the extra effort worth it. I'm quite proud to say many of my builds from a decade ago are still going, they just get passed down through the family as they age. Like I tell my new build customers "My machines won't be as cheap as a Dell, but you know what? MY machine will keep going past the warranty period." Just take pride in your work, treat folks right, and you'll get a good rep and with that comes the work.
Bah! You call that a simulation Pf0tzenpfritz? A TRUE simulation would have all those GIFs causing the whole PC to spit and sputter, with all the GIFs spinng out of time in a herky jerky motion that made you want to puke! And that text is way to readable to show the true horror! No all text must be pink or light green or baby blue on a similar light background WITH a stupid pic recreated about a bazillion times in the background AND glitter shit and blink tags torturing you!
And they forgot the most insanely suffering part, besides the comet cursors of course...the true bringer of the pain...I'm of course talkin about the cheesy MUSIC! Because nothing screams Geocities like some lousy piece of 8 bit music turned to 100 with an endless loop of the same three bars, with a stutter no less!
No Pf0tzenpfritz, to show the true heart of darkness one must plan and plot from the darkest places of their souls. They must code a CPU SloMo into the page to cause it to stutter and sputter, stick in comet cursors of Dilbert or Bart Simpson or the pocketwatch torture, it must play two bars of cheesy 8 bit music, with lots of stuttering, and finally it must have blink tags and spinning crap and glitter everywhere! Only then will it be a true lesson, which could then be used to break those damned flash "designers" by showing them what the path they have chosen leads to!
Watch out for Asrock boards! I had a devil of a time with those bastards, it turned out by default their boards are so "OC friendly" that they don't detect for shit! Also the ones I got ran about a third of a volt too hot so any autodetect would set everything WRONG. I finally had to go into the BIOS and set every damned thing manually like we used to on the old 486s, what a PITA.
As for horror stories? How about standing in a shop talking to the clerk when the front door explodes and you suddenly have an M16 in your face! I was like "Don't shoot, just gonna get my card, just here to pick up some parts, okay?" It turned out the reason this shop was constantly undercutting the one I worked for was they were fencing boxes from other states and were also cranking hot sat boxes with de-scramblers, counterfiet Windows and Adobe software, you name it. I have to admit their Win98 and Win2K copies were spot on when the fed showed it to me. The XP hologram was a little iffy.
Oh and the funniest part? The local cops didn't like our prices so took it to him and when he got wind the feds were onto him he sold the cops boxes out from under them! Ha! that is what you get for being cheapskates!
At least all they did was pretend to put in more, I've seen Rent a Ripoff actually steal RAM out of the PC when they brought it in for cleaning. And all these "if you don't know X" are so damned full of shit! Do you know how to rebuild your engine? Then you shouldn't be driving! Can you operate on your legs if you break them? Then you shouldn't be walking!
Dumbasses nobody can know everything and that is why we have mechanics, plumbers, and yes repairguys like me. I am proud to say I have NEVER copied someone's files, stolen a damned thing, or not done any job I wasn't told to do. I don't use hot software (although I will admit I use Windows copies and not originals, I use the correct key for the machine) I don't go looking for pics of your GF, I just do my job.
The moral of the story is the same as with mechanics and plumbers ask around and you'll find out if they are honest or not. I'd be happy to give them the name of a couple of my business clients if they want to know about my work, or hell just walk into their place of business. See all those whiteboxes? Guess who built them. I design the machine for the job required, which is why the printer has middle of the road CPUs (AMD Triples) but 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of RAM on the GPU, because it helps with those large banners they are always doing. The local engineer has only 2Gb of RAM but a fast CPU because the engineering program he runs doesn't use much RAM but slams the hell out of a processor.
So just ask around folks. You wouldn't take your car to "Crazy Joe's house of repair" just because he has a snazzy commercial would you? And please for the love of all that is good QUIT GOING TO WORST BUY! Because I swear I've had to fix more horribly broken shit from them than from any other shop! So just ask around, an honest fixit guy is more than happy to give you references of past customers.Hell I'll even take before and after pics and screenshots if that is what makes you happy, I'm damned proud of my work, thank you VERY much! I'm not the cheapest guy in town, but I'm honest, fair, and you get what you pay for.
While that's true that you wouldn't get data that would be of any likely use I would imagine it would be a hell of a lot easier to use prebuilt core to get much better data density than anything you'd build yourself.
That said congrats to the guys for cooking up a way to access a piece of the old days. Now if i could just find someone whose cooked up a Commodore 128 on a chip so I can check out the old sat simulation a customer had made in the 80s for one of the private bird corps that he still has all the floppies for that would be too cool.
But you see those days were actually nice and sweet, if a little slow and buggy. No what we need for future generations is a recreation of the nightmare from the depths of hell that was the true dark ages of the Internet. Yes my fellow greybeards I'm talking about the days of....dum dum dum...AOHell and Geocities! EEEK!
Ah yes, the great suffering, where every damned website was infected with Comet Cursors that would turn your cursor into Bart Simpson's ass if you were lucky, if not you ended up with the CPU melting "pocketwatch of DOOM!" that would swing like a ball of snot while slamming your PC so hard even the mightiest CPUs cried like little bitches, where page after page was "OMG Ponies!" with pink letters on lime green or puke purple text, usually with glitter shit falling like rain and the blink tag caused epileptic fits , where the AOHelltards ran amok like mountains of crazed monkeys throwing shit, and where even the strongest willed repairman could be heard to scream "Not that God damned Bonzi Buddy fucking monkey again! STFU MONKEY!"
No my friends, someone needs to create a record, a living monument to Internet horror if you will, so that those that come after us will NEVER forget. For as we have seen with the scourge that is flash, to forget one's history is to repeat it. NEVER AGAIN!
When you get that "You need an administrator password to do this" and don't get the login it is usually because you are trying to go into a restricted system area and it is trying to keep you out because Windows naturally can't tell the difference between a seasoned admin and a total dumbass that will bork his system.
The way you get around that is quite easy, there are two ways to do it: One place a link to the program that is giving you that either on the desktop or start menu with "run as administrator" checked. Windows figures if you have enough knowledge to know how to do that you should be left alone. Two you can use the God Mode trick which gives you access to pretty much anything and everything from a central location and all as admin. Pretty handy if you are having to tweak a machine or do a lot of work requiring admin.
As for network properties again God Mode or shortcut, although I do agree mixing network and sharing was a dumb idea, networking should have been left a separate UI. But if you are on a laptop that moves a lot or for other reasons you need to tweak networking a lot just make the start menu shortcut it really cuts down on the clicks.
As for the network problem, have you tried tossing the network drivers on that box? I have seen network problems like that in 7 be solved by simply tossing the crappy third party driver and using the Windows built in one. I have found especially on the Realtek NICs that often only the drivers that came with the board and the Windows ones work as the updated drivers usually break more than they fix.
Finally about security I have to agree 110%. I have watched the infection rates of customers fall off the map simply by getting them onto Windows 7. With Vista they fought the OS more than they worked, but with Windows 7 they seemed to have knocked out the bugs and made it intuitive enough that even those like my dad can find new features they didn't even know existed. For me I'd say the combination of MUCH better security and increased intuitiveness is worth the little UI "nigglers" that can usually be worked around quite simply with a minimum of fuss.
In the case of music he is probably talking about the legal DRM bought by treasonous bribery that says you own NOTHING if it is digital, you are merely paying full price for a non transferable license that can be revoked at the whim of any record label at any time.
When the simple fact that Walt Disney has been dead for longer than many here have been alive, yet his works will continue to be protected forever (Because that was Valenti's whole plan, to make copyrights "forever minus a single day") then it doesn't matter what any one artist does, because by having nearly infinite back catalogs to choose from they are certain that any combination of notes you can put together on the western scale HAS been played by an artist they controlled at some point, so they can just sue!
Telling everyone to vote with their dollars at this point is simply a waste of time, because thanks to bribery just the money they make on back catalogs can keep them bribing congress and judges for the next century! It also gives them the power to control all the major broadcast outlets, and through them have so many ads telling the public any change to the status quo is their enemy, as well as to control and shape who will be the big money makers by making sure you can't escape hearing them on everything from movie soundtracks to commercials.
So while I don't listen to their pre-packaged bullshit I say if you do, please snatch that shit. It doesn't matter whether you snatch it or don't buy it on principle anymore, because they will whip out a PPT for congress showing a nice little graph where their sales have gone down so it MUST be those filthy pirates, so we need more draconian laws, and another boost to the copyright extensions while they are at it. To quote the late George Carlin "its never gonna get any better, its never gonna change" because they have too much money and power now for anything the public does to really matter much. Hell if things get too bad they'll just have themselves declared "too big to fail" and your tax money can pay for their bonuses and bribery.
Slither away? WTF? Even when a company wins against a Linux patent troll (thus cutting down on the funds they'll have to attack others) are we still gonna read dozens of insults from the Google Fanbois? This is a good thing dude, be fricking happy!
Now to answer your question: One of the big selling points on Linux in the server role is it is completely modular from the kernel on up can be "home rolled" for whatever load and server role you are using it for. Hell ask the Gentoo guys, they have been known to even tweak for their CPU arch!
In this case however Yahoo rolled their own servers simply didn't use the infringing code. Now I'm sure this was probably unintentional, for whatever reason they simply didn't use the particular module in their build that would have bit them in the ass in this case, but be that as it may it let Yahoo take a walk. While I still say having a bazillion distros is bad on the desktop side I can see its value on the server side as it is a lot harder to attack when you don't know exactly what they have. I just never thought that protection included troll attack, hey you learn something new every day.
If you can tell me how to post it I'm all ears, as I made a journal entry but damned if I can find a button to add it to ask/. Man I hate this new layout! Oh and I tried this with and without NoScript, with and without private browsing, it doesn't seem to work on GMail or LiveMail but seems to work on Yahoo mail no matter WHAT the user does! I even used CCleaner to clean the machine first, no dice!
I'm starting to wonder if the new yahoo mail beta isn't storing the address book unencrypted on the machine somewhere for speed, because I even tried logging out of the spam dump first and no dice. I know it is during the browser session as you can almost set your watch by it. Don't go there no email. Go there and within 15 minutes you WILL be seeing those 1 link random generated emails! It is just nuts!
Ya know, I still ain't figured that one out yet. I mean sure MSFT wasn't the brightest bulb when they went "Hey, lets run everyone as admin!" with XP, but at least that could be partially explained with having no clue at the time how to fix it without borking backwards compatibility and having to get metric tons of Win9X third party code to run on the WinNT arch.
But with ActiveX you are letting web sites have low level system access and the amount of data you could glean with the first versions of ActiveX was just nuts! What were they thinking? Did the security team take a vacation or what? I still don't see how a meeting discussing ActiveX could have taken place without someone pointing out "Uhhh...guys we are kinda the biggest target for script kiddies and bad guys. What would happen if they started using this?"
As for TFA I STILL say sooner or later we are gonna have to start over. Just look up "JavaScript malware" to see how much nasty is already out there as it is, and now companies are trying to come out with stuff like WebGL because even after tying JavaScript into a pretzel trying to get more bling bling and speed it STILL isn't enough. What we need is a new language, built from the bottom up for security, that can do CPU and GPU virtualization so the code doesn't need to know squat about what you have to run the site.
Because as we have seen with previous articles on bad guys jumping out of sandboxes, what we have now is a bunch of band aids on bullet wounds. Sandboxes, NoScript, ABP, all of it is band aids trying to stop the bleeding when the simple fact is JavaScript simply isn't designed for all the bling bling bs and security as well. So I say it is time to start fresh, what we need is something that will let the folks have their bling bling in a manner that won't bite them in the ass. It won't be easy, but big things never are. But imagine a world with no drive by malware, no ad carried infections, hell all that would be left would be good old fashioned social engineering. Sounds like a nice place to me.
Exactly! I actually broke up a little NeoNazi assembly on a corner in Dallas in the 80s. They had set up with a couple of their little signs and were handing out literature on how the Holocaust was a lie. Since my grandfather made me promise I'd never forget what he saw when he liberated a camp I went around the corner to a little hobby shop and I made up my own little sign. It said "My grandfather liberated a camp, ask me about it".
Needless to say that pissed the Nazis off, they even had the balls to try to complain to the cop that was watching them, who laughed and said "he is entitled to free speech too" and many of those that walked by their signs did stop and ask me about mine. I told them exactly what my grandfather had seen, how there were open boxcars filled with rotting corpses, how they were given instructions NOT too feed the prisoners, because the poor things had been without food so long the rich GI food would throw them into shock, how they couldn't even tell male from female because they were all skeletons, and finally how they marched the Germans of the nearby town through the place to make them see what their support for Nazism had done.
After about 40 minutes they packed up and went away, throwing insults like "Jew lover" at me while they slinked off. But nobody was arrested, nobody beat anyone, they simply had no answer for the truth. I like to think my grandfather would have been proud of me that day, because I supported free speech and used his experiences to combat hate. THAT is what makes this country great, not beating someone we disagree with like the other poster wrote.
Where did I say anything about plugins? The only plug in I mentioned was noScript, because frankly browsers suck ass (which I'm sure that you will agree) when it comes to giving the user control over what scripts run and which don't. BTW I've switched to Dragon (Chreomium based) so the only extensions I have is ABP and Forecastfox.
But as I said all we really have right now is band aids on bullet wounds. wanna see one in action? This seems to work in both FF 4 and Chromium based browsers so take your pick. Make an account in Yahoo mail beta, load some phoney addresses (you'll see why in a minute) and save and close them out. Then relaunch your browser and start surfing some NSFW porntube sites like DrTuber and Xhamster, be sure to click on the links to some of the other sites advertising there. In about an hour of doing that you'll find they have managed to copy your address book and will send you spam from yourself! Sandboxes, NoScript, somehow they've managed to cut through all that and read the address book which Yahoo must be storing unencrypted somewhere on the drive.
So I still think we are gonna end up needing a new language, because JavaScript simply wasn't designed for security. We need it to be built from the bottom up with least privileges and security in mind, lots of isolation and nothing running that isn't approved. Like I said I'm just a fixit guy I don't have the answers, i'm just asking the questions. And I agree with you on the things you do NOT want, the problem is how to allow you to have the good content without the bad. Any ideas on that?
Speaking of spammers (yes i know bad segue but damned if i can think of anywhere to ask this) has anybody else noticed that those "porntube" style sites have figured out how to get your Yahoo address book from your browser somehow?
I have a customer that loves those porntube style sites and I keep getting these weird spams from him that consist of a single web link that has obviously been generated at random. since I had just cleaned his machine and knew it was good I asked him WTF was going on and he swore he had only been going to those porntube style sites, nothing else.
So i figured I have NoScript, Avast, and a fresh disc image in case anything goes wrong so what the hey, I'll try. so I started clicking random links on porntube style sites, DrTuber, Xhamster, etc and sure enough about an hour later I got an email from myself and so did everyone in my address book from the looks of the To: field. Now since I had only been using that Yahoo mail address as a spam dump I really didn't care about that, what I DID care about is this means that Yahoo must be storing my addressbook somewhere on my drive unencrypted! Either that or they have figured out how to read it from memory in BOTH Chrome and FF 4, as I had it happen in BOTH browsers! So has anybody else been seeing this weirdness?
As for TFA I'll listen to the "greenies" when they kick out Mr Al "My house has its own BBall court" Gore, who has the balls to tell us to ride the bus while he farts around in his private jet, which he has the brass balls to say is "carbon neutral " because he pays himself carbon credits from his company!
Man you have NO idea what the general skill level of your average home user is, do you? Dude i'm talking people that are fucking AMAZED when I use alt-tab or WinFlip, and alt tab has been there what? Ten damned years? And WinFlip for 5 now? Hell most of them still haven't figured out how in the hell to use the new taskbar in Windows 7, or how they have those jumplists, you REALLY think they are gonna understand virtual desktops? Please! I still have trouble getting some of them to understand the differences between a CPU and a GPU or between real memory and hard drive space!
Trust me Colin my man, you really should go and hang out at your local mom&pop shop for a day just to witness it for yourself and hear a few horror stories. Hell I had one gal that was mad as hell because "her new PCs screen was broke" and I get there and she is tapping away at the glass because she thought flat screens were all touch like cell phones! I swear to God man!
MSFT knows what they are doing, same as Apple. Keep it simple as hell, make it "clicky clicky" as much as humanly possible, make it so thinking is NOT required for most actions. It is the same reason why you'll never see a year of the Linux desktop, because if anything borks in Linux it is CLI city. Hell these people can't find any damned thing if it isn't on the fricking desktop, you think they are gonna be able to pick up bash commands? Virtual desktops is a niche idea, only included in Linux because of X11 working on a client/server model. As I pointed out with my link you CAN get Windows to behave that way, but to include it by default would be a nightmare and every OEM in the country would be tripping over themselves to disable it if not outright remove it. The support nightmare from hell is what that would be, trust me friend, I know of which I speak!
While it IS true that WGA has been hacked, and Windows 7 BTW is easier to pirate than XP, the problem is while most pirates know how to do this the clueless users do NOT which is why the pirates simply turn off Windows Updates. I'm just now starting to see it with Windows 7, all those OEM hacks that came out with the RTM version is starting to fail left and right and people are going WTF?
But like I said killing the $50 HP upgrade was some kind of stupid, because that is what I kept seeing show up on formerly pirate boxes. Now I'm starting to see Windows 7 boxes with updates turned off because the pirates can't tell the guy that gave them $50 to put Windows 7 on "Yeah you'll have to hunt down WGA killer every couple of months BTW" so instead they just go in and kill updates.
Soon enough we'll see the Windows 7 botnets all made up of pirated machines just like I've been seeing with all the Razr1911 XP Pro boxes. BTW you know how you can spot a pirated Windows 7 at a glance? Even on the shitboxes they put Windows 7 Ultimate. I saw the same with XP Pro and Vista Ultimate, the pirates don't bother with the lower SKUs so it is ALWAYS the top one. Hell I even once had the owner of another shop ask me "Can you make our machines so they'll update to our server?" and when I asked him why he would want that he handed me a copy of "Razr1911 Vista Ultimate". And before anyone asks NO I did not call MSFT, they won't even give us any breaks at all for little shops so fuck them. I just laughed at the guy and walked away.
But MSFT is full of shit if they think they know ANYTHING about the number of pirate Windows out there, because in reality for every one that updates there are probably 1000 that don't. Hell even the junkers you find at yard sales and flea markets are all running hot Windows, it has gotten to the point that I pretty much assume its pirated unless I see the sticker. What MSFT doesn't realize is the user don't have to know shit about how to pirate, all it takes is 1, just 1, guy who "knows PCs" to spread pirated Windows copies far and wide. It ain't exactly brain surgery.
Have you tried re-signing? I had the same thing happen with me at Cox (boy is that name appropriate) and like you it was pretty much a choice of that or dialup, as the DSL in this area is lucky to hit 756k down (and AT&T told me basically tough shit we're not spending on fixing the lines. must be nice to have a monopoly) so I told them I would have to cancel the account as the price jump was ridiculous.
Lucky for me the girl manning the desk was a little college girl whose PC I had worked on and she told me while they don't actually tell anybody this you can ask to re-sign and get the same 'introductory rate" for however long the contract is for. So now I just go in every two years and re-sign another contract for another 2 years at $100 a month for the whole smash (TV, Phone, and 2Mbps net) and all is gravy. Sure you can't just walk away without paying a $250 cancellation fee since you're under contract but since there isn't anything else to be had in this area it isn't like I'm going anywhere.
So tell them you want another contract or you're walking. I have a feeling that Comcast will be just like Cox and as long as you're willing to sign they're willing to deal.
Ya know, I've heard Linux guys blab about this one for but you know what? We Windows users DO NOT WANT and have no desire for alt tabbing all over the damned place. I mean I have to deal with users that won't open control panel because they think it is scary, can you imagine what kinds of support calls you'd be getting if shit could open on desktop 3 and they are on desktop 1?
But if you truly want that shit you CAN have it without a bunch of hacky bullshit. Hell you can even have the desktop look and act like KDE on gnome if you want. As with everything in Windows (and Apple from what I've been told) you simply have to pay a third party for that, as natively you get one way and one way only.
So here you go friend have fun, no need to thank me. The program you want is fourth from the top, they even have a 30 day free trial. light on resources, solid as a rock, but if you want the whole smash I'd go ahead and pick up the shell replacement along with the virtual desktop, as they really mesh together well and give you pretty much complete control over the UI. Personally I like the new Windows 7 UI enough it is the first time I've ever not switched out my shell, and this is someone that ran BB4Win way back in the day since I hated the Win UI. I'd say they finally nailed it so most likely they'll completely bork it up again for Windows 8, sigh. At least Win 7 is supported until 2020 so by the time Windows 9 rolls around it ought to be good again.
That's easy, the Sega CD/32x/Saturn fiasco. Here you had a company that had constantly been raking in the money that thanks to the Sega Japan and Sega USA disconnect had a 123 punch that completely obliterated the company in less than 3 years. By the time Dreamcast rolled around they had burnt so damned many of their customers (as well as major retailers and developers with the Saturn sneak launch) they couldn't get anybody onboard and completely destroyed the company. While Sony's current fiacso certainly isn't gonna help their bottom line I doubt it will completely torpedo the company like the above did Sega.
As for TFA frankly Sony is gonna have to do some damned serious groveling and frankly this couldn't have happened at a worse time. Nintendo is starting to build buzz on the rumors of their next gen while MSFT is rolling in the dough with the highest sell through rate and can afford to undercut the living hell out of Sony in the retail space and still make damned good money. To me the bigger question is will the drop in PSN users and bad buzz ultimately damage them enough they can't afford the giant R&D budget for PS4. lets be honest DLC and online are major cash cows for developers and if folks are afraid to whip out their CC on PSN their third party support could dry up and blow away.
While I don't think this has the ability to kill Sony I think it will be seriously hard to get momentum back and bring new users into PSN. They were already getting killed by XBL and this couldn't have been a worse time to have this happen. Now the big question is will they be able to entice new users after everyone has seen "PS3 hacked CC numbers stolen!" all over the headlines. I bet new sales of PS3 is gonna suck for at least a quarter or two, unless they are willing to bleed money for a couple of quarters by selling the PS3 below cost to make the PS3 cheaper than the X360.
Let this old PC repairman enlighten you as to why those numbers as so low on XP. It is because the data is collected using the Malicious Software Removal Tool, which any repair guy that has had one of the bazillion "Razr1911 WinXP Pro Corp SP2" boxes cross their desks know that they all have Windows Updates turned off (to keep from getting WGA'd) and are infected with more viruses than a Bangkok Whore.
I'd love to see the numbers of XP infections pre WGA and after, along with how many pirate versions are out there. Because while I can understand MSFT wanting to stop piracy (but IMNSHO they royally fucked up by getting rid of the Win 7 HP $50 upgrade, as that thing turned more pirates into legit users than I'd ever seen) but anyone who has worked repair for any length of time knows there are a shitload of pirate Windows out there and nearly all have updates off.
It isn't just the "Crazy Dave's house of whitebox" BTW, it is all those that decided they didn't want to pay for an upgrade that got their "smart PC friend" who has every Razr1911 version on a spindle, and there are even plenty out there that have legit keys that aren't being used because the guy they took it to has a Razr1911 automated install and simply never bothered to change the keys, or the box had XP Home and all they had was the Razr XP Pro. Finally you have all those pre Vista Cheapo Best Buy and other retail joints that have autoupdates turned OFF for some damned reason, probably to cut down on those "OMG my PC has a yellow thing in the right corner OMG!" support calls.
In the end I can tell you I probably get 3 minimum cross my desk a week that haven't ever seen an update, and most are infected all to hell. I see so damned many PCs missing tons of updates that I keep WSUS Offline on my network fully loaded with every update for every OS from Win2K Pro to Win 7 X64, just so I don't have to waste time and bandwidth on updating all these damned machines. MSRT might give you a tiny taste of what is going on, but since WGA I'd say its data really isn't worth much.
Not to mention TFS is badly written. if you look at the actual figures Win 7 32 bit infections rose from 3 per 1000 to 4 per 1000 whereas XP went from 18 infected per 1000 to 14 per 1000 which is pretty damned good numbers for Windows 7, especially considering how many completely clueless users are picking up Windows 7 right now. So to only have an infection rate of 4 per 1000 when you have the "granny demographic" that still haven't figured out the difference between memory and HDD space? I'd say those numbers are excellent.
And if there are any MSFT devs here? Please for the love of all that is good and decent in the world don't fuck shit up for Win 8 okay? you FINALLY after all these damned years came up with a kick ass UI that lets those with years of experience work faster while still letting those like my dad that are clueless find things easily. It is intuitive, it is nice, it runs great and is stable. So look, I know you guys have a tradition of borking the OS after a good release, but just....just don't, okay?
If you want a killer feature for Win 8 old Hairyfeet will give you one, make something like Homegroup so those like my dad can simply connect their work and home PCs without knowing more than "clicky clicky" and a password/dongle combo. Just have it save an encrypted token onto any flash stick so they can bring it home and plug it in, answer a few questions, and have access to their files from work. That would be kick ass and easily worth paying to upgrade to Windows 8 WITHOUT borking everything. So please, you have a good thing here, don't fuck it up!
Sorry, I know I shouldn't feed the AC troll but WTF...hey dumbass, you DO know there are literally thousands of resellers out there that sell Linux desktops and laptops any damned way you want them? your argument hasn't held water since Ubuntu 8 came out.
As for why they are more expensive to have non Windows at Dell? Just shows you don't have any fricking idea how assembly lines work. For every order that isn't standard they gotta have someone yank a PC off the line and that dude ain't working for free, sorry. And with Shuttleworth constantly switching shit around Dell also has to run their own repo (because if they don't it borks the sound and networking if you try to update) and that also costs money and time which Dell isn't gonna give you out of the goodness of their hearts. Finally PCs will ALWAYS be cheaper with Windows because Dell and the other OEMs get paid to load them with crapware that don't run on Linux, duh!
As for TFA? Too expensive for what you get. I just hope the guy on the other ChromeOS thread was right and that Cr-48 or whatever they call it will sell for $150 retail, because at THAT price it will be a DIYers dream. An ARM based netbook for $150 that I can follow some how-to and turn into an uber lightweight Linux netbook with crazy battery life? I'll be all over that. But this thing is just nuts and expecting anybody to be able to run a Cloud based OS with 100Mb a month? That isn't a joke, that's insulting. Hell you won't even be able to check your email on 100Mb a month!
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I take it you haven't tried it? I've found it actually uses less resources than MSE, as it doesn't use the extra shields if you aren't running an app that would require them. For example no P2P app? No P2P shield running. Its defaults are pretty much "plug and play" and the only thing I ask folks is if they want the voice or not. Some think its cool that Avast will "talk" instead of beeping and bonging when it finds something, others prefer the quiet of a pop up only.
So you should really give it a try, its free, its easy, doesn't slam the CPU, all in all a nice app. And I don't think we are giving the same advice as I've found MSE to be more like ClamWin whereas Avast is more like a HIPS system. With MSE it won't say anything if you have missed a scan, hell it won't say anything if you don't update it for several days either if you have the notification not set to always be visible in Vista/7 whereas Avast will tell you with a pop up and voice if you'd like "I'm not able to update, please check connection" or "Your regular scan was missed, would you like to run it now?" I've also noticed that MSE, at least in my experience, isn't really great at dealing with JavaScript nastiness, whereas Avast works like a HIPS and scans the page BEFORE it loads, thus keeping drive bys away. It is a subtle difference but an important one IMHO.
Here is one I have found to be VERY true...."Good enough is more than enough for most folks" which I have found time after time after time to be true. After the Intel bribery and compiler scandals came out I switched to nothing but AMD for my shop. Did anyone notice? They noticed the lower prices, that is about it.
That final 10% in speed that so many pay 40% or more to get frankly is never noticed by a good 90% of the population. And I've found this to be true for desktops, laptops, mobile, you name it. Once you get to a certain point, the "good enough" point, anything faster the users won't notice because the work they have simply isn't using it or allowing them to "feel" the difference to justify the price. I still have a couple of gamer customers who do their shopping with me based on what the benchmarks say this week, but the rest? They would be better off spending their money on other components, like a larger drive or SSD.
I have a feeling that we are gonna be seeing PC purchases put off for longer and longer simply because most folks can't tell the difference between their dual core with 2Gb and an octacore with 8Gb simply because most of their time is spent in Youtube, FB, chat, little popcap games, hell even I'm happy with my three year old AMD 925 quad and HD4850, and I used to change that stuff every year. For the jobs most of us have good enough is more than enough and spending more is simply a waste.
Hell my most popular thing ATM? A $150 7 inch Android pad. Sure most here would consider those CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) but with the females that are buying these things up? For what they want to do with them, which is check their mail, read eBooks while their kids play in the park, maybe a little chat, it is "good enough" and does what they want. So for them spending $500 on an iPad would simply be a waste, as they'd never use the features or hit the CPU and RAM hard enough for it to make a difference. It all comes down to the jobs you have for the device and for most even the lower end is beyond "good enough" nowadays.
Thank you. I don't know why in the hell the guy would think "breaching charge" because I thought I was pretty clear when I said explode it was like "Blam!"as they slammed the door open and suddenly there are a dozen feds in full body armor and helmets with M16s right in my face. I thought the poor kid behind the counter was gonna piss himself.
The funny part was the lead fed was actually annoyed at first that I wasn't sitting there shaking in my boots. I told him "I used to play three nights a week behind chicken wire. You do that for 6 months and you'll find you just don't startle easily anymore." But once he saw my card and saw I wasn't gonna act like an asshole or smart mouth him he was actually really decent about the whole thing. He let me stand there and watch them load up the gear, let me check out one of the counterfeit boxes of each version (like I said the Win98 and Win2K were spot on, I'd have never known, the hologram on XP was iffy though) and was even nice enough to tell me that there was gonna be a police auction of one of his partners (my boss ended up with a trailer load of nice parts and PCs they'd been using for their operation) and all and all was pretty decent about the whole thing. Just not the way one would expect to spend a Tuesday you know?
Allow me to agree and disagree. yes to being a pro, and I have never EVER looked at someone's files (I go so far as to tell them if they want me to back up their files they should be aware I may see file names during the backup so please don't be asking me to back up funky files) but as far as MSE? Meh.
It is great if you already know what you are doing and aren't going to any dodgy sites, but home users? Avast free is a better choice, as it has web shield which scans pages before they load and will strip out nasty scripts like drive bys, has P2P and messenger protection, all in all I'd say it is a better AV and with both being 100% free (I'd never give a customer trialware crap) why not use the better solution?
As far as NTBackup? If you want built in Windows 7 imaging backup is fine, personally I prefer to give my customers the free Paragon backup and recovery. Its solid, its free, it is reliable, it gives you a live CD option if the machine ever gets borked beyond booting, and if the customer has a USB HDD I'm happy to set it up to backup to it so they don't have to worry about HDD failures.
I used to have this argument with my former boss all the time. he was one of those "give them just enough rope" types, that wouldn't patch it, no AV, just clean it, so they'd get boned later and have to pay him again, whereas I believe I've done my job if the ONLY reason they have to come to me is they want to upgrade the hardware. I give them either Dragon or Firefox for a browser, put in ABP so they don't get ads (which are a big source of infection) give them a full AV, I even ask if they'd like the "full package" at no extra charge and if they say yes they get the latest Flash, Klite codec so they can play any format, and Libre Office so they can edit word docs, and a PDF reader (Foxit) along with a PDF printer so they can easily save files offline without printing. Thanks to Ninite it takes no real time from me and gives them a nicer PC
Between that and Comodo time machine which lets them just push F11 if they ever screw up the boot to restore from there, otherwise they can restore straight from Windows, makes it pretty damned hard to screw up a machine that I fixed. Sure I don't see these people again hardly ever, but I get enough referrals from their friends and family they send by to make the extra effort worth it. I'm quite proud to say many of my builds from a decade ago are still going, they just get passed down through the family as they age. Like I tell my new build customers "My machines won't be as cheap as a Dell, but you know what? MY machine will keep going past the warranty period." Just take pride in your work, treat folks right, and you'll get a good rep and with that comes the work.
Bah! You call that a simulation Pf0tzenpfritz? A TRUE simulation would have all those GIFs causing the whole PC to spit and sputter, with all the GIFs spinng out of time in a herky jerky motion that made you want to puke! And that text is way to readable to show the true horror! No all text must be pink or light green or baby blue on a similar light background WITH a stupid pic recreated about a bazillion times in the background AND glitter shit and blink tags torturing you!
And they forgot the most insanely suffering part, besides the comet cursors of course...the true bringer of the pain...I'm of course talkin about the cheesy MUSIC! Because nothing screams Geocities like some lousy piece of 8 bit music turned to 100 with an endless loop of the same three bars, with a stutter no less!
No Pf0tzenpfritz, to show the true heart of darkness one must plan and plot from the darkest places of their souls. They must code a CPU SloMo into the page to cause it to stutter and sputter, stick in comet cursors of Dilbert or Bart Simpson or the pocketwatch torture, it must play two bars of cheesy 8 bit music, with lots of stuttering, and finally it must have blink tags and spinning crap and glitter everywhere! Only then will it be a true lesson, which could then be used to break those damned flash "designers" by showing them what the path they have chosen leads to!
Watch out for Asrock boards! I had a devil of a time with those bastards, it turned out by default their boards are so "OC friendly" that they don't detect for shit! Also the ones I got ran about a third of a volt too hot so any autodetect would set everything WRONG. I finally had to go into the BIOS and set every damned thing manually like we used to on the old 486s, what a PITA.
As for horror stories? How about standing in a shop talking to the clerk when the front door explodes and you suddenly have an M16 in your face! I was like "Don't shoot, just gonna get my card, just here to pick up some parts, okay?" It turned out the reason this shop was constantly undercutting the one I worked for was they were fencing boxes from other states and were also cranking hot sat boxes with de-scramblers, counterfiet Windows and Adobe software, you name it. I have to admit their Win98 and Win2K copies were spot on when the fed showed it to me. The XP hologram was a little iffy.
Oh and the funniest part? The local cops didn't like our prices so took it to him and when he got wind the feds were onto him he sold the cops boxes out from under them! Ha! that is what you get for being cheapskates!
At least all they did was pretend to put in more, I've seen Rent a Ripoff actually steal RAM out of the PC when they brought it in for cleaning. And all these "if you don't know X" are so damned full of shit! Do you know how to rebuild your engine? Then you shouldn't be driving! Can you operate on your legs if you break them? Then you shouldn't be walking!
Dumbasses nobody can know everything and that is why we have mechanics, plumbers, and yes repairguys like me. I am proud to say I have NEVER copied someone's files, stolen a damned thing, or not done any job I wasn't told to do. I don't use hot software (although I will admit I use Windows copies and not originals, I use the correct key for the machine) I don't go looking for pics of your GF, I just do my job.
The moral of the story is the same as with mechanics and plumbers ask around and you'll find out if they are honest or not. I'd be happy to give them the name of a couple of my business clients if they want to know about my work, or hell just walk into their place of business. See all those whiteboxes? Guess who built them. I design the machine for the job required, which is why the printer has middle of the road CPUs (AMD Triples) but 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of RAM on the GPU, because it helps with those large banners they are always doing. The local engineer has only 2Gb of RAM but a fast CPU because the engineering program he runs doesn't use much RAM but slams the hell out of a processor.
So just ask around folks. You wouldn't take your car to "Crazy Joe's house of repair" just because he has a snazzy commercial would you? And please for the love of all that is good QUIT GOING TO WORST BUY! Because I swear I've had to fix more horribly broken shit from them than from any other shop! So just ask around, an honest fixit guy is more than happy to give you references of past customers.Hell I'll even take before and after pics and screenshots if that is what makes you happy, I'm damned proud of my work, thank you VERY much! I'm not the cheapest guy in town, but I'm honest, fair, and you get what you pay for.
While that's true that you wouldn't get data that would be of any likely use I would imagine it would be a hell of a lot easier to use prebuilt core to get much better data density than anything you'd build yourself.
That said congrats to the guys for cooking up a way to access a piece of the old days. Now if i could just find someone whose cooked up a Commodore 128 on a chip so I can check out the old sat simulation a customer had made in the 80s for one of the private bird corps that he still has all the floppies for that would be too cool.
But you see those days were actually nice and sweet, if a little slow and buggy. No what we need for future generations is a recreation of the nightmare from the depths of hell that was the true dark ages of the Internet. Yes my fellow greybeards I'm talking about the days of....dum dum dum...AOHell and Geocities! EEEK!
Ah yes, the great suffering, where every damned website was infected with Comet Cursors that would turn your cursor into Bart Simpson's ass if you were lucky, if not you ended up with the CPU melting "pocketwatch of DOOM!" that would swing like a ball of snot while slamming your PC so hard even the mightiest CPUs cried like little bitches, where page after page was "OMG Ponies!" with pink letters on lime green or puke purple text, usually with glitter shit falling like rain and the blink tag caused epileptic fits , where the AOHelltards ran amok like mountains of crazed monkeys throwing shit, and where even the strongest willed repairman could be heard to scream "Not that God damned Bonzi Buddy fucking monkey again! STFU MONKEY!"
No my friends, someone needs to create a record, a living monument to Internet horror if you will, so that those that come after us will NEVER forget. For as we have seen with the scourge that is flash, to forget one's history is to repeat it. NEVER AGAIN!
When you get that "You need an administrator password to do this" and don't get the login it is usually because you are trying to go into a restricted system area and it is trying to keep you out because Windows naturally can't tell the difference between a seasoned admin and a total dumbass that will bork his system.
The way you get around that is quite easy, there are two ways to do it: One place a link to the program that is giving you that either on the desktop or start menu with "run as administrator" checked. Windows figures if you have enough knowledge to know how to do that you should be left alone. Two you can use the God Mode trick which gives you access to pretty much anything and everything from a central location and all as admin. Pretty handy if you are having to tweak a machine or do a lot of work requiring admin.
As for network properties again God Mode or shortcut, although I do agree mixing network and sharing was a dumb idea, networking should have been left a separate UI. But if you are on a laptop that moves a lot or for other reasons you need to tweak networking a lot just make the start menu shortcut it really cuts down on the clicks.
As for the network problem, have you tried tossing the network drivers on that box? I have seen network problems like that in 7 be solved by simply tossing the crappy third party driver and using the Windows built in one. I have found especially on the Realtek NICs that often only the drivers that came with the board and the Windows ones work as the updated drivers usually break more than they fix.
Finally about security I have to agree 110%. I have watched the infection rates of customers fall off the map simply by getting them onto Windows 7. With Vista they fought the OS more than they worked, but with Windows 7 they seemed to have knocked out the bugs and made it intuitive enough that even those like my dad can find new features they didn't even know existed. For me I'd say the combination of MUCH better security and increased intuitiveness is worth the little UI "nigglers" that can usually be worked around quite simply with a minimum of fuss.
In the case of music he is probably talking about the legal DRM bought by treasonous bribery that says you own NOTHING if it is digital, you are merely paying full price for a non transferable license that can be revoked at the whim of any record label at any time.
When the simple fact that Walt Disney has been dead for longer than many here have been alive, yet his works will continue to be protected forever (Because that was Valenti's whole plan, to make copyrights "forever minus a single day") then it doesn't matter what any one artist does, because by having nearly infinite back catalogs to choose from they are certain that any combination of notes you can put together on the western scale HAS been played by an artist they controlled at some point, so they can just sue!
Telling everyone to vote with their dollars at this point is simply a waste of time, because thanks to bribery just the money they make on back catalogs can keep them bribing congress and judges for the next century! It also gives them the power to control all the major broadcast outlets, and through them have so many ads telling the public any change to the status quo is their enemy, as well as to control and shape who will be the big money makers by making sure you can't escape hearing them on everything from movie soundtracks to commercials.
So while I don't listen to their pre-packaged bullshit I say if you do, please snatch that shit. It doesn't matter whether you snatch it or don't buy it on principle anymore, because they will whip out a PPT for congress showing a nice little graph where their sales have gone down so it MUST be those filthy pirates, so we need more draconian laws, and another boost to the copyright extensions while they are at it. To quote the late George Carlin "its never gonna get any better, its never gonna change" because they have too much money and power now for anything the public does to really matter much. Hell if things get too bad they'll just have themselves declared "too big to fail" and your tax money can pay for their bonuses and bribery.
Slither away? WTF? Even when a company wins against a Linux patent troll (thus cutting down on the funds they'll have to attack others) are we still gonna read dozens of insults from the Google Fanbois? This is a good thing dude, be fricking happy!
Now to answer your question: One of the big selling points on Linux in the server role is it is completely modular from the kernel on up can be "home rolled" for whatever load and server role you are using it for. Hell ask the Gentoo guys, they have been known to even tweak for their CPU arch!
In this case however Yahoo rolled their own servers simply didn't use the infringing code. Now I'm sure this was probably unintentional, for whatever reason they simply didn't use the particular module in their build that would have bit them in the ass in this case, but be that as it may it let Yahoo take a walk. While I still say having a bazillion distros is bad on the desktop side I can see its value on the server side as it is a lot harder to attack when you don't know exactly what they have. I just never thought that protection included troll attack, hey you learn something new every day.
If you can tell me how to post it I'm all ears, as I made a journal entry but damned if I can find a button to add it to ask /. Man I hate this new layout! Oh and I tried this with and without NoScript, with and without private browsing, it doesn't seem to work on GMail or LiveMail but seems to work on Yahoo mail no matter WHAT the user does! I even used CCleaner to clean the machine first, no dice!
I'm starting to wonder if the new yahoo mail beta isn't storing the address book unencrypted on the machine somewhere for speed, because I even tried logging out of the spam dump first and no dice. I know it is during the browser session as you can almost set your watch by it. Don't go there no email. Go there and within 15 minutes you WILL be seeing those 1 link random generated emails! It is just nuts!
Ya know, I still ain't figured that one out yet. I mean sure MSFT wasn't the brightest bulb when they went "Hey, lets run everyone as admin!" with XP, but at least that could be partially explained with having no clue at the time how to fix it without borking backwards compatibility and having to get metric tons of Win9X third party code to run on the WinNT arch.
But with ActiveX you are letting web sites have low level system access and the amount of data you could glean with the first versions of ActiveX was just nuts! What were they thinking? Did the security team take a vacation or what? I still don't see how a meeting discussing ActiveX could have taken place without someone pointing out "Uhhh...guys we are kinda the biggest target for script kiddies and bad guys. What would happen if they started using this?"
As for TFA I STILL say sooner or later we are gonna have to start over. Just look up "JavaScript malware" to see how much nasty is already out there as it is, and now companies are trying to come out with stuff like WebGL because even after tying JavaScript into a pretzel trying to get more bling bling and speed it STILL isn't enough. What we need is a new language, built from the bottom up for security, that can do CPU and GPU virtualization so the code doesn't need to know squat about what you have to run the site.
Because as we have seen with previous articles on bad guys jumping out of sandboxes, what we have now is a bunch of band aids on bullet wounds. Sandboxes, NoScript, ABP, all of it is band aids trying to stop the bleeding when the simple fact is JavaScript simply isn't designed for all the bling bling bs and security as well. So I say it is time to start fresh, what we need is something that will let the folks have their bling bling in a manner that won't bite them in the ass. It won't be easy, but big things never are. But imagine a world with no drive by malware, no ad carried infections, hell all that would be left would be good old fashioned social engineering. Sounds like a nice place to me.
Exactly! I actually broke up a little NeoNazi assembly on a corner in Dallas in the 80s. They had set up with a couple of their little signs and were handing out literature on how the Holocaust was a lie. Since my grandfather made me promise I'd never forget what he saw when he liberated a camp I went around the corner to a little hobby shop and I made up my own little sign. It said "My grandfather liberated a camp, ask me about it".
Needless to say that pissed the Nazis off, they even had the balls to try to complain to the cop that was watching them, who laughed and said "he is entitled to free speech too" and many of those that walked by their signs did stop and ask me about mine. I told them exactly what my grandfather had seen, how there were open boxcars filled with rotting corpses, how they were given instructions NOT too feed the prisoners, because the poor things had been without food so long the rich GI food would throw them into shock, how they couldn't even tell male from female because they were all skeletons, and finally how they marched the Germans of the nearby town through the place to make them see what their support for Nazism had done.
After about 40 minutes they packed up and went away, throwing insults like "Jew lover" at me while they slinked off. But nobody was arrested, nobody beat anyone, they simply had no answer for the truth. I like to think my grandfather would have been proud of me that day, because I supported free speech and used his experiences to combat hate. THAT is what makes this country great, not beating someone we disagree with like the other poster wrote.
Where did I say anything about plugins? The only plug in I mentioned was noScript, because frankly browsers suck ass (which I'm sure that you will agree) when it comes to giving the user control over what scripts run and which don't. BTW I've switched to Dragon (Chreomium based) so the only extensions I have is ABP and Forecastfox.
But as I said all we really have right now is band aids on bullet wounds. wanna see one in action? This seems to work in both FF 4 and Chromium based browsers so take your pick. Make an account in Yahoo mail beta, load some phoney addresses (you'll see why in a minute) and save and close them out. Then relaunch your browser and start surfing some NSFW porntube sites like DrTuber and Xhamster, be sure to click on the links to some of the other sites advertising there. In about an hour of doing that you'll find they have managed to copy your address book and will send you spam from yourself! Sandboxes, NoScript, somehow they've managed to cut through all that and read the address book which Yahoo must be storing unencrypted somewhere on the drive.
So I still think we are gonna end up needing a new language, because JavaScript simply wasn't designed for security. We need it to be built from the bottom up with least privileges and security in mind, lots of isolation and nothing running that isn't approved. Like I said I'm just a fixit guy I don't have the answers, i'm just asking the questions. And I agree with you on the things you do NOT want, the problem is how to allow you to have the good content without the bad. Any ideas on that?
Speaking of spammers (yes i know bad segue but damned if i can think of anywhere to ask this) has anybody else noticed that those "porntube" style sites have figured out how to get your Yahoo address book from your browser somehow?
I have a customer that loves those porntube style sites and I keep getting these weird spams from him that consist of a single web link that has obviously been generated at random. since I had just cleaned his machine and knew it was good I asked him WTF was going on and he swore he had only been going to those porntube style sites, nothing else.
So i figured I have NoScript, Avast, and a fresh disc image in case anything goes wrong so what the hey, I'll try. so I started clicking random links on porntube style sites, DrTuber, Xhamster, etc and sure enough about an hour later I got an email from myself and so did everyone in my address book from the looks of the To: field. Now since I had only been using that Yahoo mail address as a spam dump I really didn't care about that, what I DID care about is this means that Yahoo must be storing my addressbook somewhere on my drive unencrypted! Either that or they have figured out how to read it from memory in BOTH Chrome and FF 4, as I had it happen in BOTH browsers! So has anybody else been seeing this weirdness?
As for TFA I'll listen to the "greenies" when they kick out Mr Al "My house has its own BBall court" Gore, who has the balls to tell us to ride the bus while he farts around in his private jet, which he has the brass balls to say is "carbon neutral " because he pays himself carbon credits from his company!
Man you have NO idea what the general skill level of your average home user is, do you? Dude i'm talking people that are fucking AMAZED when I use alt-tab or WinFlip, and alt tab has been there what? Ten damned years? And WinFlip for 5 now? Hell most of them still haven't figured out how in the hell to use the new taskbar in Windows 7, or how they have those jumplists, you REALLY think they are gonna understand virtual desktops? Please! I still have trouble getting some of them to understand the differences between a CPU and a GPU or between real memory and hard drive space!
Trust me Colin my man, you really should go and hang out at your local mom&pop shop for a day just to witness it for yourself and hear a few horror stories. Hell I had one gal that was mad as hell because "her new PCs screen was broke" and I get there and she is tapping away at the glass because she thought flat screens were all touch like cell phones! I swear to God man!
MSFT knows what they are doing, same as Apple. Keep it simple as hell, make it "clicky clicky" as much as humanly possible, make it so thinking is NOT required for most actions. It is the same reason why you'll never see a year of the Linux desktop, because if anything borks in Linux it is CLI city. Hell these people can't find any damned thing if it isn't on the fricking desktop, you think they are gonna be able to pick up bash commands? Virtual desktops is a niche idea, only included in Linux because of X11 working on a client/server model. As I pointed out with my link you CAN get Windows to behave that way, but to include it by default would be a nightmare and every OEM in the country would be tripping over themselves to disable it if not outright remove it. The support nightmare from hell is what that would be, trust me friend, I know of which I speak!
While it IS true that WGA has been hacked, and Windows 7 BTW is easier to pirate than XP, the problem is while most pirates know how to do this the clueless users do NOT which is why the pirates simply turn off Windows Updates. I'm just now starting to see it with Windows 7, all those OEM hacks that came out with the RTM version is starting to fail left and right and people are going WTF?
But like I said killing the $50 HP upgrade was some kind of stupid, because that is what I kept seeing show up on formerly pirate boxes. Now I'm starting to see Windows 7 boxes with updates turned off because the pirates can't tell the guy that gave them $50 to put Windows 7 on "Yeah you'll have to hunt down WGA killer every couple of months BTW" so instead they just go in and kill updates.
Soon enough we'll see the Windows 7 botnets all made up of pirated machines just like I've been seeing with all the Razr1911 XP Pro boxes. BTW you know how you can spot a pirated Windows 7 at a glance? Even on the shitboxes they put Windows 7 Ultimate. I saw the same with XP Pro and Vista Ultimate, the pirates don't bother with the lower SKUs so it is ALWAYS the top one. Hell I even once had the owner of another shop ask me "Can you make our machines so they'll update to our server?" and when I asked him why he would want that he handed me a copy of "Razr1911 Vista Ultimate". And before anyone asks NO I did not call MSFT, they won't even give us any breaks at all for little shops so fuck them. I just laughed at the guy and walked away.
But MSFT is full of shit if they think they know ANYTHING about the number of pirate Windows out there, because in reality for every one that updates there are probably 1000 that don't. Hell even the junkers you find at yard sales and flea markets are all running hot Windows, it has gotten to the point that I pretty much assume its pirated unless I see the sticker. What MSFT doesn't realize is the user don't have to know shit about how to pirate, all it takes is 1, just 1, guy who "knows PCs" to spread pirated Windows copies far and wide. It ain't exactly brain surgery.
Have you tried re-signing? I had the same thing happen with me at Cox (boy is that name appropriate) and like you it was pretty much a choice of that or dialup, as the DSL in this area is lucky to hit 756k down (and AT&T told me basically tough shit we're not spending on fixing the lines. must be nice to have a monopoly) so I told them I would have to cancel the account as the price jump was ridiculous.
Lucky for me the girl manning the desk was a little college girl whose PC I had worked on and she told me while they don't actually tell anybody this you can ask to re-sign and get the same 'introductory rate" for however long the contract is for. So now I just go in every two years and re-sign another contract for another 2 years at $100 a month for the whole smash (TV, Phone, and 2Mbps net) and all is gravy. Sure you can't just walk away without paying a $250 cancellation fee since you're under contract but since there isn't anything else to be had in this area it isn't like I'm going anywhere.
So tell them you want another contract or you're walking. I have a feeling that Comcast will be just like Cox and as long as you're willing to sign they're willing to deal.
Ya know, I've heard Linux guys blab about this one for but you know what? We Windows users DO NOT WANT and have no desire for alt tabbing all over the damned place. I mean I have to deal with users that won't open control panel because they think it is scary, can you imagine what kinds of support calls you'd be getting if shit could open on desktop 3 and they are on desktop 1?
But if you truly want that shit you CAN have it without a bunch of hacky bullshit. Hell you can even have the desktop look and act like KDE on gnome if you want. As with everything in Windows (and Apple from what I've been told) you simply have to pay a third party for that, as natively you get one way and one way only.
So here you go friend have fun, no need to thank me. The program you want is fourth from the top, they even have a 30 day free trial. light on resources, solid as a rock, but if you want the whole smash I'd go ahead and pick up the shell replacement along with the virtual desktop, as they really mesh together well and give you pretty much complete control over the UI. Personally I like the new Windows 7 UI enough it is the first time I've ever not switched out my shell, and this is someone that ran BB4Win way back in the day since I hated the Win UI. I'd say they finally nailed it so most likely they'll completely bork it up again for Windows 8, sigh. At least Win 7 is supported until 2020 so by the time Windows 9 rolls around it ought to be good again.
That's easy, the Sega CD/32x/Saturn fiasco. Here you had a company that had constantly been raking in the money that thanks to the Sega Japan and Sega USA disconnect had a 123 punch that completely obliterated the company in less than 3 years. By the time Dreamcast rolled around they had burnt so damned many of their customers (as well as major retailers and developers with the Saturn sneak launch) they couldn't get anybody onboard and completely destroyed the company. While Sony's current fiacso certainly isn't gonna help their bottom line I doubt it will completely torpedo the company like the above did Sega.
As for TFA frankly Sony is gonna have to do some damned serious groveling and frankly this couldn't have happened at a worse time. Nintendo is starting to build buzz on the rumors of their next gen while MSFT is rolling in the dough with the highest sell through rate and can afford to undercut the living hell out of Sony in the retail space and still make damned good money. To me the bigger question is will the drop in PSN users and bad buzz ultimately damage them enough they can't afford the giant R&D budget for PS4. lets be honest DLC and online are major cash cows for developers and if folks are afraid to whip out their CC on PSN their third party support could dry up and blow away.
While I don't think this has the ability to kill Sony I think it will be seriously hard to get momentum back and bring new users into PSN. They were already getting killed by XBL and this couldn't have been a worse time to have this happen. Now the big question is will they be able to entice new users after everyone has seen "PS3 hacked CC numbers stolen!" all over the headlines. I bet new sales of PS3 is gonna suck for at least a quarter or two, unless they are willing to bleed money for a couple of quarters by selling the PS3 below cost to make the PS3 cheaper than the X360.
Let this old PC repairman enlighten you as to why those numbers as so low on XP. It is because the data is collected using the Malicious Software Removal Tool, which any repair guy that has had one of the bazillion "Razr1911 WinXP Pro Corp SP2" boxes cross their desks know that they all have Windows Updates turned off (to keep from getting WGA'd) and are infected with more viruses than a Bangkok Whore.
I'd love to see the numbers of XP infections pre WGA and after, along with how many pirate versions are out there. Because while I can understand MSFT wanting to stop piracy (but IMNSHO they royally fucked up by getting rid of the Win 7 HP $50 upgrade, as that thing turned more pirates into legit users than I'd ever seen) but anyone who has worked repair for any length of time knows there are a shitload of pirate Windows out there and nearly all have updates off.
It isn't just the "Crazy Dave's house of whitebox" BTW, it is all those that decided they didn't want to pay for an upgrade that got their "smart PC friend" who has every Razr1911 version on a spindle, and there are even plenty out there that have legit keys that aren't being used because the guy they took it to has a Razr1911 automated install and simply never bothered to change the keys, or the box had XP Home and all they had was the Razr XP Pro. Finally you have all those pre Vista Cheapo Best Buy and other retail joints that have autoupdates turned OFF for some damned reason, probably to cut down on those "OMG my PC has a yellow thing in the right corner OMG!" support calls.
In the end I can tell you I probably get 3 minimum cross my desk a week that haven't ever seen an update, and most are infected all to hell. I see so damned many PCs missing tons of updates that I keep WSUS Offline on my network fully loaded with every update for every OS from Win2K Pro to Win 7 X64, just so I don't have to waste time and bandwidth on updating all these damned machines. MSRT might give you a tiny taste of what is going on, but since WGA I'd say its data really isn't worth much.
Not to mention TFS is badly written. if you look at the actual figures Win 7 32 bit infections rose from 3 per 1000 to 4 per 1000 whereas XP went from 18 infected per 1000 to 14 per 1000 which is pretty damned good numbers for Windows 7, especially considering how many completely clueless users are picking up Windows 7 right now. So to only have an infection rate of 4 per 1000 when you have the "granny demographic" that still haven't figured out the difference between memory and HDD space? I'd say those numbers are excellent.
And if there are any MSFT devs here? Please for the love of all that is good and decent in the world don't fuck shit up for Win 8 okay? you FINALLY after all these damned years came up with a kick ass UI that lets those with years of experience work faster while still letting those like my dad that are clueless find things easily. It is intuitive, it is nice, it runs great and is stable. So look, I know you guys have a tradition of borking the OS after a good release, but just....just don't, okay?
If you want a killer feature for Win 8 old Hairyfeet will give you one, make something like Homegroup so those like my dad can simply connect their work and home PCs without knowing more than "clicky clicky" and a password/dongle combo. Just have it save an encrypted token onto any flash stick so they can bring it home and plug it in, answer a few questions, and have access to their files from work. That would be kick ass and easily worth paying to upgrade to Windows 8 WITHOUT borking everything. So please, you have a good thing here, don't fuck it up!
Sorry, I know I shouldn't feed the AC troll but WTF...hey dumbass, you DO know there are literally thousands of resellers out there that sell Linux desktops and laptops any damned way you want them? your argument hasn't held water since Ubuntu 8 came out.
As for why they are more expensive to have non Windows at Dell? Just shows you don't have any fricking idea how assembly lines work. For every order that isn't standard they gotta have someone yank a PC off the line and that dude ain't working for free, sorry. And with Shuttleworth constantly switching shit around Dell also has to run their own repo (because if they don't it borks the sound and networking if you try to update) and that also costs money and time which Dell isn't gonna give you out of the goodness of their hearts. Finally PCs will ALWAYS be cheaper with Windows because Dell and the other OEMs get paid to load them with crapware that don't run on Linux, duh!
As for TFA? Too expensive for what you get. I just hope the guy on the other ChromeOS thread was right and that Cr-48 or whatever they call it will sell for $150 retail, because at THAT price it will be a DIYers dream. An ARM based netbook for $150 that I can follow some how-to and turn into an uber lightweight Linux netbook with crazy battery life? I'll be all over that. But this thing is just nuts and expecting anybody to be able to run a Cloud based OS with 100Mb a month? That isn't a joke, that's insulting. Hell you won't even be able to check your email on 100Mb a month!