Linux IS easier and MORE Robust and Definetly MORE Secure then windows
Especially if you, as the "system admin" of Dad's system, put Teamviewer on the system, then remove dad's account's sudo privs, make an account for yourself with the sudo privs. Yes, I know it will be more work for you, but if you pre-install nearly everything you can imagine he'll need from the repos, then if he gets a gksu prompt for something, you can be somewhat sure its a bogus attempt by some malware, or, something he's trying to do that requires privs, such as perhaps a scanner.. Again, its a bit more work, but the system is oh-so-much-more secure...
yup.. Even on the XP to Ubuntu upgrades I do, the default Ubuntu sudo for the users account is removed.. In other words, they CANNOT do ANY root-ish thing.. yeah I know, a bit more work for me, which is why I have Teamviewer on each system AND a user account for me which has the sudo creds.. I determine when setting up the machine what things the user is most likely going to need that will trigger a gksu dialog and add the user to those groups, and pre-install most of the apps the user will need from the repositories.. So far has worked swimmingly..
THIS!! Which is why the laptop I take for these kinds of 911 calls to guilible relatives/friends whose Windows machines have been screwed up by malware is a Linux machine. I'm the defacto tech support for my church/neighborhood. I've had several "clients" who are the typical "click on EVERYTHING" types, and who would call frequently when their machines got so slow that they couldn't do anything.. In the first case, the machine was so hozed that only a clean reinstall of windows would be effective. But of course the owner didn't have the recovery disks for XP. The machine maxed out at 2GB, so getting the user to buy Win7 was a non-starter. To save the day, I loaded an Ubuntu LiveCD and showed what Ubuntu looked like, and asked "Can you live with that??" with an unspoken "You have no choice..".. The user said "whatever you say, I gotta have my computer!!".. So I backed up the docs to a USB drive via the LiveCD, and wiped/installed Ubuntu.. After a couple of calls from the user, saying "how do I do X??", I'm not hearing much from her anymore. As far as I know she still clicks on everything in sight, but I've not gotten anymore "my computers slow" issues. In fact, her husband, once he saw how well Ubuntu worked, he wanted to be "upgraded" to Ubuntu, and now he's a happy camper.. Word has spread, and I'm doing a fair number of these "upgrades"... Still using 10.04, as I'm still trying to decide if MATE or Cinnamon OR X/Lubuntu is the best way to replace Unity on 12.04..
Jesus Christ, WHAT AN ASSHOLE!! Telling the boss to fire him, with jobs as scarce as they are..... For all YOU know, AC-Asshole, the boss might be the one TELLING him the hardware he has to use.. LOVE AC's hiding behind anonymity so they can spew their hatred.. I know, I know, replying to AC's... just encourges em... So shoot me, I HATE people like this AC...
yup.. been that time for me for quite a while. Not only am I running Linux on all my machines, but have moved quite a few neighbors/friends over to Ubuntu from XP. In a few cases, the migration was sorta forced, in that machines were malware'ed up wazoo, and the owners of the systems did not have the recovery disks for a clean install. I showed them Ubuntu via LiveCD on their systems and asked them, could you live with that? Of course, my liveCD was a mashup with Gnome2 configured to look very close to XP. In all cases, the answer was "SURE!!"... Several of these users were always calling with problems when they were still on XP, but since going to Ubuntu, I get much less calls and absolutely NONE regarding malware.. One of the users is/was one of these people who clicked on EVERYTHING.. Told him numerous times, DON'T DO THAT.. but went in one ear/out the other. Because of this, he was always calling and saying "My machine is really slow..".. I'd tell him quit clicking on everything, and make a visit and clean what I could off the machine. After Ubuntu? no calls...
Simple fix: Dont use Windows 8... That's what I'm doing.. Linux on all machines, what little Windows stuff I have to do, that isn't usable in wine, gets run on an XP virtualbox vm.. From trying out the preview of Win 8, its a turd, arguably worse than Vista and ME...
For familial tech support I swear by Teamviewer..Its not opensource but for non-commercial use, such as what I use it for, its free. It works on Mac/Linux/Windows AND Android.. I'm in Nevada and I have relatives in San Diego, Sacramento and back in Illinois.. I have Teamviewer installed on everybody and when they need a hand with their systems, I connect up and "look over their shoulders". Since I'm usually on Linux, its fantastic to be able to help them no matter if I'm on Windows or Linux.. Once a cousin gave me a call saying he was having trouble printing, so I teamview'ed from my Android smartphone... Worked fine, and got him going in a few minutes... Can't beat it..
Buy a VirginMobile LG or Samsung phone on eBay for $40-$75, sign up for VirginMobile's $35/mo 300 anytime minutes/"unlimited" data/text plan. Easy-Peasy.. I've had an LG Optimus on this plan since it was $25/mo, and still grandfathered at that rate. I use the phone primarily for the internet capability, to vpn/ssh/remote desktop to customers/my systems as needed when I'm on the go.. The phone has been rooted and CyanogenMod 7 rom installed, which gives me a wifi tether capability without adding any apps. Even using the tether fairly frequently, I've never hit the 2.5GB "cap" that the "unlimited" data carries..
Anyone on a prepaid cell phones lost a reasonable expectation of privacy, and can be tracked without warrant. If that's not a flagrant 4th amendment violation, I don't know what is.
So, if you're a bad guy, and you buy and pay for a prepaid cellphone with an anonymous prepaid debit card, filled up by cash, they can track the phone w/o a warrant, but HOW are they going to know WHO It is they are tracking??? Just curious...
You landed a 100 billion dollar rover on Mars. So, how's that supposed to help us poor people again? Well, congrats anyway.
Romney/Ryan 2012!!!!!
Hey sparky.. it was NOT a hundred billion dollars, it was 2.5 BIllion dollars, a significantly smaller amount of money. If you hadn't put a signature showing that you at LEAST had your head screwed on correctly about our next president, I'd figure you were just ANOTHER one of the multitudes of mindless O-Bots that infest./.. Please educate yourself on America's space program..
Kinda how I do it.. except its free for Linux devices.. Windows? you pay the going rate..
I've had a bunch of neighbors who had Windows systems that were so crufty with malware, that it was uneconomical to try to clean them, AND said systems did not have the recovery disks available to do a clean reinstall, so those folks were shown a booted Ubuntu LiveCD, and told "THIS is the only way I can fix your system..".. A couple of them were skeptical, but were told it was the only way. Later all decided that they liked the increased speed that an efficient OS brought to their older machines, plus the big PLUS.. No more crufty malware to clean all the time AND no system-slowing anti-virus. Since I used a customized XP-ish Gnome 2 UI on 10.04 on the initial installs, the users felt right at home. Now working on the same thing using Cinnamon and 12.04 for the necessary upgrades next April when 10.04 goes out of support...
Too bad this is from an AC.. despite that its great to see someone, even an AC, actually telling the TRUTH, vs all of the O-Bots that infest/... Of course, the O-Bots are gonna crank both AC and me down into -5 land, as that's how they roll... Obama, the definition of FAILURE, unless you consider success being taking the only remaining Superpower in the world and making a really good attempt in just under 4 years to turn it into USSR version 2... January 20th, 2013, THE END OF AN ERROR... O-Bots, mod me down... I care not!!
On my formerly Ubuntu box at home the change motivated me to give the KDE and Kubuntu a look for the first time in years. Luckily I really like it and am now unlikely to go back to Ubuntu and Unity(or GNOME )
If you're like me and like Gnome, you gotta try the Cinnamon DE from the guys at Mint.. I recently upgraded several of my machines to 12.04 and since I detest Unity, I started with MATE, which is buggy as hell, and looks kinda bizzare.. Some friends suggested Cinnamon, and they were right... LOVE IT!!
Metro is so unpopular with desktop users that the tablets are going to get a bad name just due to bad name recognition. So it's a risky strategy at best.
Lovely.. Microsoft shooting itself in the foot.. Couldn't happen to a more appropriate company... Hope it blows their whole flippin foot off..
Well if the Corporate world decides that Win8 is just too much drain on their workers productivity, you may see another Corporate holdout like the bypassing of that turd, Vista. If EVERYBODY is sticking to 7, MS is gonna be forced to keep extending 7 support, JUST like they're doing for XP... Not a heck of a lot of ways around it for them... Since most corps have volume licenses for 7 and image their own systems, which I'm sure they will do even on new systems that ship with 8, JUST like they did during the time OEMs were shipping Vista.. I lost track of the number of systems we recieved from Dell with Vista on them that we immediately reimaged to XP at my last job..
The above improvements over Win7 are admirable and appear to be highly useful, but that blindingly stupid Metro (or WHATever they're calling it this week) kinda negates the improvements over Win7. ALL MS would have to do to fix this fiasco is allow you to install with "Classic Win7" or "Metro".. your choice.. Obviously if you're putting it on a laptop thats a convertable tablet, you'd opt for Metro, but for a desktop, I gotta know WHAT the hell they're smoking in Redmond...
The insanity that infests Microsofts UI design people that brought forth that abortion previously called Metro, seems to have attacked the suits at Canonical/Ubuntu, such that they feel the need to shove their turd, Unity, down loyal Ubuntu users throats.. I'm a long LONG time Linux user (Slackware-1994), and a Ubuintu user since 7.04, and this idiotic abortion called Unity, makes me reconsider my loyalty to Ubuntu. For now, I'm upgrading my systems to 12.04, and putting Cinnamon DE on it.. After installing 12.04 on a test machine, I made a valiant effort to actually try to use Unity in my day-to-day workflow... NO WAY.. It had me screaming and tearing my hair out by the roots.. I gotta say, WHOever designed Unity, needs some serious mental health care.. Since I weaned myself off Microsoft's teat a while back, I wasnt too worried about what kind of idiocy MS had come up with this time, but since I'm the defacto neigbhood tech guy, I figured I'd better check it out, so took a spare machine and installed the preview.. I'm sure it would be perfect for a tablet pc but on a DESKTOP?? WHAT the hell is MS smoking???? There's just too much insanity in the world today....
Since I like to watch UK streaming tv, I signed up with a VPS provider who along with their US datacenters, has a datacenter in the UK, and added a UK VPS to my account, along with the two others I have in their Dallas DC. An install of OpenVPN and Squid on the Ubuntu 10.04 OS and I'm off to watching UK TV. So far, its worked perfectly. I'm loaning it currently to friends who are rabid Olympics fans. Oh and the good part? The VPS is an OpenVZ 512mb container, choice of all sorts of Linux distros, and with 300GB/mo transfer, 15GB of diskspace, and costs me a whopping $5.95/mo. The two I have in Dallas are also $5.95/mo. As soon as $$$ are a bit looser in my wallet, I'm planning on going with the $59.95/yr plan on the two Dallas slices... Google ThrustVPS.. Don't have any financial ties to them, just been a customer for nearly two years and very happy with their service...
I think the greatest PR thing NASA could do would be to say "F all this data blackout shite, taxpayers get a live "CBS big brother" feed of whatever we download, as it arrives". Of course that would result in their webservers melting, and a lot of idiotic comments, but it would also result in explosive interest levels.
It appears that is EXACTLY what the MarsOne organization has in mind http://mars-one.com/en/.. They plan on getting major funding thru making the astronaut selection (supposedly to begin in a few years) and everything else in the initial planning and execution stages between now and 2023, as essentially a reality-tv series.. From reading their website, they seem to have their act together.. Admittedly, they are going for a VERY far-fetched goal, but geez.. if you wait for NASA or even other governments to do a Mars misson, you'll be waiting forever... I for one, wish them the best, and will consider donating when I have the finances to be able to...
The problem with cops is their f'ing unions.. As in this case, the chief can issue a policy as she did, an officer can violate it, and even if there is penalties attached to the policy violation, the f'ing police union usually manages to get the penalty reduced to a "suspension with pay" which, translated, is a f'ing FREE VACATION on the taxpayer's dime... Until those police unions are castrated, there will be NO reining in on these issues with police..
What a maroon.. If you feel the need for root in Ubuntu, its trivially easy to turn it on.. I gotta believe you installed Ubuntu, ran it till you found the first little "nit" then decided that nobody should run Ubuntu.. Most "administratory" gui things in Ubuntu will use gksu to prompt you for YOUR password and then run just as though they were being run by root... Its BLINDINGLY obvious you didn't use Ubuntu for more than a few minutes..
On the REALLY rare occassions I get a call for support on Ubuntu systems, I simply have the user start up the teamviewer install I put on the system and connect to their system and usually can either fix the "problem" or show them how to do what they're trying to do in just a few minutes. These systems have an "admin" account which is essentially the default user that is created when the system is installed, ie: with full sudo privs. The primary user of the machine has his sudo configured to allow installs from the Ubuntu Software Center and thats about it.. This has worked out pretty well so far..
I've done a bunch of systems over to Ubuntu 10.04 from XP. The first ones were kinda forced, since the XP installs were so hozed with malware that only a clean reinstall would suffice, and of course, the users couldn't find the recovery disks OR they never made them. Two of these installs have been so liked by the users that they have brought friends in to see and gotten me to "upgrade" these others with good working XP installs to Ubuntu. Everybody loves that their systems don't get bogged down with malware anymore. Prior to the first two "upgrades" I got a call from these two people every month or so that their system was sooo slow.. I'd come by, run SpybotSD,etc. cleaning the system up *for a while*.. These two people LOVE to click on most anything... Now they don't get infected.. THATS gotta be worth SOMETHING
Absolutely.. On the machines I have/support, they will stay with Windows 7 till something less shit-tastic than Windows 8 comes along... As for my Linux machines, all of which are on Ubuntu 10.04, they will stay there till 10.04 reaches no-support-dom... I think Windows 8 is gonna be another Vista debacle for MS.. I think they might realize this somewhat since apparently the pricing is gonna be really cheap for upgrading.. I wouldn't upgrade from 7 to 8, even if it was FREE.. All MS would have to do to "fix" 8 between now and RTM is make a switch during setup that says "Desktop or Tablet"... With desktop, you get startmenu, no metro, just like 7.. if you select Tablet, you get metro.. which looks like it would work fine on a tablet... Desktop? not so much...
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Linux IS easier and MORE Robust and Definetly MORE Secure then windows
Especially if you, as the "system admin" of Dad's system, put Teamviewer on the system, then remove dad's account's sudo privs, make an account for yourself with the sudo privs. Yes, I know it will be more work for you, but if you pre-install nearly everything you can imagine he'll need from the repos, then if he gets a gksu prompt for something, you can be somewhat sure its a bogus attempt by some malware, or, something he's trying to do that requires privs, such as perhaps a scanner.. Again, its a bit more work, but the system is oh-so-much-more secure...
yup.. Even on the XP to Ubuntu upgrades I do, the default Ubuntu sudo for the users account is removed.. In other words, they CANNOT do ANY root-ish thing.. yeah I know, a bit more work for me, which is why I have Teamviewer on each system AND a user account for me which has the sudo creds.. I determine when setting up the machine what things the user is most likely going to need that will trigger a gksu dialog and add the user to those groups, and pre-install most of the apps the user will need from the repositories.. So far has worked swimmingly..
THIS!! Which is why the laptop I take for these kinds of 911 calls to guilible relatives/friends whose Windows machines have been screwed up by malware is a Linux machine. I'm the defacto tech support for my church/neighborhood. I've had several "clients" who are the typical "click on EVERYTHING" types, and who would call frequently when their machines got so slow that they couldn't do anything.. In the first case, the machine was so hozed that only a clean reinstall of windows would be effective. But of course the owner didn't have the recovery disks for XP. The machine maxed out at 2GB, so getting the user to buy Win7 was a non-starter. To save the day, I loaded an Ubuntu LiveCD and showed what Ubuntu looked like, and asked "Can you live with that??" with an unspoken "You have no choice..".. The user said "whatever you say, I gotta have my computer!!".. So I backed up the docs to a USB drive via the LiveCD, and wiped/installed Ubuntu.. After a couple of calls from the user, saying "how do I do X??", I'm not hearing much from her anymore. As far as I know she still clicks on everything in sight, but I've not gotten anymore "my computers slow" issues. In fact, her husband, once he saw how well Ubuntu worked, he wanted to be "upgraded" to Ubuntu, and now he's a happy camper.. Word has spread, and I'm doing a fair number of these "upgrades"... Still using 10.04, as I'm still trying to decide if MATE or Cinnamon OR X/Lubuntu is the best way to replace Unity on 12.04..
Jesus Christ, WHAT AN ASSHOLE!! Telling the boss to fire him, with jobs as scarce as they are..... For all YOU know, AC-Asshole, the boss might be the one TELLING him the hardware he has to use.. LOVE AC's hiding behind anonymity so they can spew their hatred.. I know, I know, replying to AC's... just encourges em... So shoot me, I HATE people like this AC...
yup.. been that time for me for quite a while. Not only am I running Linux on all my machines, but have moved quite a few neighbors/friends over to Ubuntu from XP. In a few cases, the migration was sorta forced, in that machines were malware'ed up wazoo, and the owners of the systems did not have the recovery disks for a clean install. I showed them Ubuntu via LiveCD on their systems and asked them, could you live with that? Of course, my liveCD was a mashup with Gnome2 configured to look very close to XP. In all cases, the answer was "SURE!!"... Several of these users were always calling with problems when they were still on XP, but since going to Ubuntu, I get much less calls and absolutely NONE regarding malware.. One of the users is/was one of these people who clicked on EVERYTHING.. Told him numerous times, DON'T DO THAT.. but went in one ear/out the other. Because of this, he was always calling and saying "My machine is really slow..".. I'd tell him quit clicking on everything, and make a visit and clean what I could off the machine. After Ubuntu? no calls...
Simple fix: Dont use Windows 8... That's what I'm doing.. Linux on all machines, what little Windows stuff I have to do, that isn't usable in wine, gets run on an XP virtualbox vm.. From trying out the preview of Win 8, its a turd, arguably worse than Vista and ME...
Fundraising via Paypal ending with Paypal freezing all proceeds in 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1..
For familial tech support I swear by Teamviewer..Its not opensource but for non-commercial use, such as what I use it for, its free. It works on Mac/Linux/Windows AND Android.. I'm in Nevada and I have relatives in San Diego, Sacramento and back in Illinois.. I have Teamviewer installed on everybody and when they need a hand with their systems, I connect up and "look over their shoulders". Since I'm usually on Linux, its fantastic to be able to help them no matter if I'm on Windows or Linux.. Once a cousin gave me a call saying he was having trouble printing, so I teamview'ed from my Android smartphone... Worked fine, and got him going in a few minutes... Can't beat it..
Buy a VirginMobile LG or Samsung phone on eBay for $40-$75, sign up for VirginMobile's $35/mo 300 anytime minutes/"unlimited" data/text plan. Easy-Peasy.. I've had an LG Optimus on this plan since it was $25/mo, and still grandfathered at that rate. I use the phone primarily for the internet capability, to vpn/ssh/remote desktop to customers/my systems as needed when I'm on the go.. The phone has been rooted and CyanogenMod 7 rom installed, which gives me a wifi tether capability without adding any apps. Even using the tether fairly frequently, I've never hit the 2.5GB "cap" that the "unlimited" data carries..
Anyone on a prepaid cell phones lost a reasonable expectation of privacy, and can be tracked without warrant. If that's not a flagrant 4th amendment violation, I don't know what is.
So, if you're a bad guy, and you buy and pay for a prepaid cellphone with an anonymous prepaid debit card, filled up by cash, they can track the phone w/o a warrant, but HOW are they going to know WHO It is they are tracking??? Just curious...
You landed a 100 billion dollar rover on Mars. So, how's that supposed to help us poor people again? Well, congrats anyway.
Romney/Ryan 2012!!!!!
Hey sparky.. it was NOT a hundred billion dollars, it was 2.5 BIllion dollars, a significantly smaller amount of money. If you hadn't put a signature showing that you at LEAST had your head screwed on correctly about our next president, I'd figure you were just ANOTHER one of the multitudes of mindless O-Bots that infest ./ .. Please educate yourself on America's space program..
Kinda how I do it.. except its free for Linux devices.. Windows? you pay the going rate..
I've had a bunch of neighbors who had Windows systems that were so crufty with malware, that it was uneconomical to try to clean them, AND said systems did not have the recovery disks available to do a clean reinstall, so those folks were shown a booted Ubuntu LiveCD, and told "THIS is the only way I can fix your system.." .. A couple of them were skeptical, but were told it was the only way. Later all decided that they liked the increased speed that an efficient OS brought to their older machines, plus the big PLUS.. No more crufty malware to clean all the time AND no system-slowing anti-virus. Since I used a customized XP-ish Gnome 2 UI on 10.04 on the initial installs, the users felt right at home. Now working on the same thing using Cinnamon and 12.04 for the necessary upgrades next April when 10.04 goes out of support...
Too bad this is from an AC.. despite that its great to see someone, even an AC, actually telling the TRUTH, vs all of the O-Bots that infest /. .. Of course, the O-Bots are gonna crank both AC and me down into -5 land, as that's how they roll... Obama, the definition of FAILURE, unless you consider success being taking the only remaining Superpower in the world and making a really good attempt in just under 4 years to turn it into USSR version 2... January 20th, 2013, THE END OF AN ERROR... O-Bots, mod me down... I care not!!
On my formerly Ubuntu box at home the change motivated me to give the KDE and Kubuntu a look for the first time in years. Luckily I really like it and am now unlikely to go back to Ubuntu and Unity(or GNOME )
If you're like me and like Gnome, you gotta try the Cinnamon DE from the guys at Mint.. I recently upgraded several of my machines to 12.04 and since I detest Unity, I started with MATE, which is buggy as hell, and looks kinda bizzare.. Some friends suggested Cinnamon, and they were right... LOVE IT!!
Linux fan since 1994/Slackware...
Metro is so unpopular with desktop users that the tablets are going to get a bad name just due to bad name recognition. So it's a risky strategy at best.
Lovely.. Microsoft shooting itself in the foot.. Couldn't happen to a more appropriate company... Hope it blows their whole flippin foot off..
Signed Linux fanboi...
Well if the Corporate world decides that Win8 is just too much drain on their workers productivity, you may see another Corporate holdout like the bypassing of that turd, Vista. If EVERYBODY is sticking to 7, MS is gonna be forced to keep extending 7 support, JUST like they're doing for XP... Not a heck of a lot of ways around it for them... Since most corps have volume licenses for 7 and image their own systems, which I'm sure they will do even on new systems that ship with 8, JUST like they did during the time OEMs were shipping Vista.. I lost track of the number of systems we recieved from Dell with Vista on them that we immediately reimaged to XP at my last job..
The above improvements over Win7 are admirable and appear to be highly useful, but that blindingly stupid Metro (or WHATever they're calling it this week) kinda negates the improvements over Win7. ALL MS would have to do to fix this fiasco is allow you to install with "Classic Win7" or "Metro".. your choice.. Obviously if you're putting it on a laptop thats a convertable tablet, you'd opt for Metro, but for a desktop, I gotta know WHAT the hell they're smoking in Redmond...
The insanity that infests Microsofts UI design people that brought forth that abortion previously called Metro, seems to have attacked the suits at Canonical/Ubuntu, such that they feel the need to shove their turd, Unity, down loyal Ubuntu users throats.. I'm a long LONG time Linux user (Slackware-1994), and a Ubuintu user since 7.04, and this idiotic abortion called Unity, makes me reconsider my loyalty to Ubuntu. For now, I'm upgrading my systems to 12.04, and putting Cinnamon DE on it.. After installing 12.04 on a test machine, I made a valiant effort to actually try to use Unity in my day-to-day workflow... NO WAY.. It had me screaming and tearing my hair out by the roots.. I gotta say, WHOever designed Unity, needs some serious mental health care.. Since I weaned myself off Microsoft's teat a while back, I wasnt too worried about what kind of idiocy MS had come up with this time, but since I'm the defacto neigbhood tech guy, I figured I'd better check it out, so took a spare machine and installed the preview.. I'm sure it would be perfect for a tablet pc but on a DESKTOP?? WHAT the hell is MS smoking???? There's just too much insanity in the world today....
Since I like to watch UK streaming tv, I signed up with a VPS provider who along with their US datacenters, has a datacenter in the UK, and added a UK VPS to my account, along with the two others I have in their Dallas DC. An install of OpenVPN and Squid on the Ubuntu 10.04 OS and I'm off to watching UK TV. So far, its worked perfectly. I'm loaning it currently to friends who are rabid Olympics fans. Oh and the good part? The VPS is an OpenVZ 512mb container, choice of all sorts of Linux distros, and with 300GB/mo transfer, 15GB of diskspace, and costs me a whopping $5.95/mo. The two I have in Dallas are also $5.95/mo. As soon as $$$ are a bit looser in my wallet, I'm planning on going with the $59.95/yr plan on the two Dallas slices... Google ThrustVPS.. Don't have any financial ties to them, just been a customer for nearly two years and very happy with their service...
I think the greatest PR thing NASA could do would be to say "F all this data blackout shite, taxpayers get a live "CBS big brother" feed of whatever we download, as it arrives". Of course that would result in their webservers melting, and a lot of idiotic comments, but it would also result in explosive interest levels.
It appears that is EXACTLY what the MarsOne organization has in mind http://mars-one.com/en/.. They plan on getting major funding thru making the astronaut selection (supposedly to begin in a few years) and everything else in the initial planning and execution stages between now and 2023, as essentially a reality-tv series.. From reading their website, they seem to have their act together.. Admittedly, they are going for a VERY far-fetched goal, but geez.. if you wait for NASA or even other governments to do a Mars misson, you'll be waiting forever... I for one, wish them the best, and will consider donating when I have the finances to be able to...
The problem with cops is their f'ing unions.. As in this case, the chief can issue a policy as she did, an officer can violate it, and even if there is penalties attached to the policy violation, the f'ing police union usually manages to get the penalty reduced to a "suspension with pay" which, translated, is a f'ing FREE VACATION on the taxpayer's dime... Until those police unions are castrated, there will be NO reining in on these issues with police..
What a maroon.. If you feel the need for root in Ubuntu, its trivially easy to turn it on.. I gotta believe you installed Ubuntu, ran it till you found the first little "nit" then decided that nobody should run Ubuntu.. Most "administratory" gui things in Ubuntu will use gksu to prompt you for YOUR password and then run just as though they were being run by root... Its BLINDINGLY obvious you didn't use Ubuntu for more than a few minutes..
On the REALLY rare occassions I get a call for support on Ubuntu systems, I simply have the user start up the teamviewer install I put on the system and connect to their system and usually can either fix the "problem" or show them how to do what they're trying to do in just a few minutes. These systems have an "admin" account which is essentially the default user that is created when the system is installed, ie: with full sudo privs. The primary user of the machine has his sudo configured to allow installs from the Ubuntu Software Center and thats about it.. This has worked out pretty well so far..
I've done a bunch of systems over to Ubuntu 10.04 from XP. The first ones were kinda forced, since the XP installs were so hozed with malware that only a clean reinstall would suffice, and of course, the users couldn't find the recovery disks OR they never made them. Two of these installs have been so liked by the users that they have brought friends in to see and gotten me to "upgrade" these others with good working XP installs to Ubuntu. Everybody loves that their systems don't get bogged down with malware anymore. Prior to the first two "upgrades" I got a call from these two people every month or so that their system was sooo slow.. I'd come by, run SpybotSD,etc. cleaning the system up *for a while*.. These two people LOVE to click on most anything... Now they don't get infected.. THATS gotta be worth SOMETHING
Absolutely.. On the machines I have/support, they will stay with Windows 7 till something less shit-tastic than Windows 8 comes along... As for my Linux machines, all of which are on Ubuntu 10.04, they will stay there till 10.04 reaches no-support-dom... I think Windows 8 is gonna be another Vista debacle for MS.. I think they might realize this somewhat since apparently the pricing is gonna be really cheap for upgrading.. I wouldn't upgrade from 7 to 8, even if it was FREE.. All MS would have to do to "fix" 8 between now and RTM is make a switch during setup that says "Desktop or Tablet"... With desktop, you get startmenu, no metro, just like 7.. if you select Tablet, you get metro.. which looks like it would work fine on a tablet... Desktop? not so much...