I've tried this before, and encountered problems which I am sure are surmountable.
Using Disk Utility, I don't have the option of selecting the boot image. I don't know where to look for this option, it's not apparent. I created a disk image from the folder containing the 16 x86 OpenBSD files I downloaded and this measured 4.5 MB because I think it just grabbed one of those files (cd37.iso) and ignored the others.
So I tried Roxio Toast to do it, but it also has no option for El Burito/boot disk, nor can I change any settings for cdrom37.fs apart from the order Roxio sees the files in. I don't think putting that file top of the list will change how it is treated.
I searched for mkisofs, but this project is now no longer on its own, but subsumed into xcdrecord from what I can tell. Obtaining the source of that project from berliOS led to other difficulties - it's designed to *not* work with a make command under Darwin, but smake. So, I had to get the smake source, which I did, but I couldn't get that to compile either (it suggested I use smake).
I'm on a G5, so a floppy disk isn't an option.
I had thought from this quote, "OpenBSD doesn't make ISOs" (from here) that a DIY bootable CDR was the only option. I agree it should be a no brainer, but so far I've been frustrated by my own limitations because the method is not idiot proof.
I agree that e-books don't have the same feel as printed and bound books, but you can have the portability of a book with a simple use of the split command and an iPod. Somewhat smaller than a laptop.
Because OpenBSD isn't available in a user friendly (read idiot proof).iso download?
Personally, I want to try OpenBSD 3.7, I have the files, but no mkisofs means the instructions I've found to make the damn image are not straightforward.
I know you've got your reasons, but if you're going to ask publicly 'why don't people use this lovely secure system?' then you have to ask yourself, 'why don't we make it more accessible to n00bs?'
Been there, done that. Fonts damn near killed my system. There is a general use half assed cure though, a third party app which will handle font usage.
I hit just shy of 6,000 fonts, and my system was heading for the wall before I started with Font Agent. It takes all fonts, gives you a preview of your typefaces, then you can opt to turn them off, so that Font Book isn't working with so much baggage for general tasks. It isn't quite like uninstalling fonts, they auto-activate as required. But it's a makeshift solution to getting a slightly improved functionality on a Mac with a lot of fonts.
I have got rid of all except the basic fonts I need after filenames and other things left my browser looking like something in Klingon, so I don't screw with them anymore.
However, I shouldn't offer false hope. Microsoft Word has it's own software to scan your font library, so even if the fonts are deactivated, Word will still throw a tantrum for whatever reason, and take hours to load on first instance with huge numbers of fonts. Sorry.
Did you update your Panther installation, or install Tiger to a clean partition? If you did update, can you take a look at how fragmented your files are with Disk Warrior?
Last I checked Disk Warrior wasn't Tiger compatible, but it will show the general health of the data layout on a partition. Mine were in a real bad state due to the upgrade, with Activity Monitor showing frequent use of 70% proc resources.
I wiped a second hard drive (which only contained backup data, no outright loss), clean installed Tiger, then when the Firewire Import existing data option came up, I pointed it to the existing Tiger installation on the other hard drive. It ported across all my apps, documents, etcetera, all unscathed give or take a few programs looking for the serial numbers again. No re-installations except maybe Norton.
Then, due to fears of fragmentation happening again, I made a partition scheme with disk space divided by content type, so I replaced my Documents folder with an alias pointing to the/Volumes/Documents drive, and for Movies, Music and Pictures.
Now Activity Monitor shows proc usage dropping to a steady 5-10% (in as much as you can tell from the bars on screen).
Really hope that is of some assistance, I know others who had to clean re-install Tiger, but the benefits were worth it.
Anyone here on Slashdot who dares to dispute the awesome veracity of the parent post needs to plan a trip to Dublin in the near future.
I will show you a room which contains two computers:
2.26 GHz Dell P4 - Windows XP SP2 with Norton 2005
200 MHz Bastard P2 - No current OS, multiple available
You call me ahead of arriving at my house and I will put your choice of Linux/BSD/Windows that I have available on that second box. Then show you that the 200 MHz PC is faster than the 2+ GHz Dell when Norton is doing a full system scan.
Maybe the proc is weighed down by other things, it's unrealistic it could take a 90% performance hit, but my drives are as fragmentation free as is reasonably expected of a home user, so that's not a factor. Still, it's more pleasant during scans to use the bucket that was liberated from the junkyard than the proper PC, so much so I don't run weekly scans anymore.
The screenshots I've seen show a really, really clock on the desktop. No really. It's quite spiffy.
Really.
It's this and the groundbreaking RSS shiznit that shows the sort of innovation that will make users more than willing to lose 10% of the damn desktop to the stupid taskbar (maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like it's grown morbidly obese).
Other than that, ooooh.... um, we have a new file system to look forward to I think, which is definitely better than those stupid Mac users who got to leave all their documents and applications (give or take the compatibility issues) and just install Tiger under the existing Panther installation.
Not for Longhorn users. If you're upgrading, you'll have to wipe the NTFS partition. I'd like to know if Longhorn can mount NTFS, so maybe you could migrate your documents, but I doubt it.
Other than that.... well, no plans to mimic/outright steal Dashboard just yet, did I mention the clock?
My only issue with it is that I left it on the verbose setting so that the pop-ups would happen on NIS 2005. I had it set that was on NIS 2004 and that was okay because it had an option to "Always do this for this program", so I didn't have to greenlight Opera or Thunderbird accessing servers more than once.
That button is missing for me now. I don't know whether it's disabled by an option, or removed by design.
Hehe, guess I should have qualified my use of such terms that cause offense.
Outlook is an MS app, so it has the same vulnerability to.jpg files that cause exploit potential as IE or Explorer.
If it need be said, on Windows I use Thunderbird. KMail on SuSE and Gentoo. And I'm strongly thinking about regressing to MacMail on OS X because Entourage isn't worth the idiosyncrasies that I've found it to have.
Basically, if you close Entourage while a network operation (mail retrieval) is in progress it warns you about it. If you go ahead and quit then it just hangs. The other day it prompted me to relaunch Finder before Force Quitting Entourage. Today it prevented the system (G5) from shutting down. All I wanted was a calendar and some value added to a mail client. I can't believe I looked to Microsoft for that.
When I use VirusBarrier X on Mac it scans newly created files and downloaded files on the fly. Thing is, it doesn't always have the right environment to do a proper job of it.
Say I'm working on a word processor or image document, and it has a temporary file before it's saved, then if there is any sort of migration of data which occurs when the program is scanning then VirusBarrier says the file has no contents and warns you not to open it.
Common sense prevailing, this is a really small irk to the user, but on-the-fly scanning is well and good but has shortcomings in certain instances. But disabling incoming email scanning is asking for trouble. What of the corrupted jpg files that work over the.dll files in XP if viewed in a lot of Microsoft apps? Look at a hacked file with.jpg extension in Outlook and you've got a problem. The best way to protect against it is to keep the scanning on.
In my experience, if it isn't a full system scan, or startup time, then I can just about live with the lost cycles if I need to, and I do for HL2 and some other wanton wastes of resources.
In my experience Norton Antivirus ignores default browsers and uses Internet Explorer when you ask it to take you to the instructions for manual virus removal.
Norton Antivirus, despite regular updates by LiveUpdate, does not give full scans in that it does not find certain very frikkin' major trojans on any Windows system. The Shinwow virus that still resides on my XP system is a case in point, as is the Java byte exploit which allowed another user on the system to accidentally have it put there by some scurrilous website,
On Mac Norton Antivirus lost a lot of respect, and a lot of Mac users will just tell you that AV is for suckers anyway, but Norton pissed off people when their existing disk utilities (Speed Disk, Disk Doctor I think) which handled drive optimization was not Panther compatible. Certain people (those running the 10.2 Norton on Panther 10.3) lost complete functionality on their hard drives ("churning" is how I saw it described) requiring formatting with (AFAIK) no chance of file recovery. Same goes with using Norton 9 on Tiger - don't.
When using Norton Antivirus year on year the 'upgrades' mean that your boot time, and logon times increase. See my first point that this does not mean that you are more protected as at least one older known trojan is still undetected by a full system scan.
If you enable Program Launch Monitoring then Norton will tell you about absolutely every little thing that accesses the internet. This is a good thing, but from what I can see, they've taken out the damn option to "Don't show me this bullshit again, of course Firefox is going online!" and it keeps happening.
Just earlier today, I let Norton integrate itself into my Dad's mail client, Outlook Express, then I got 5 warnings that NORTON was being called by another program, and accessing the internet. This isn't even the veil of a false sense of protection. I increasingly think this junk is being coded by morons. Compared to each other, EZ Armour, eTrust Antivirus whatever it's called runs a scan faster, finds more, and I trust it more. It's not any worse to boot speeds. And while 'the devil you know is better than the devil you don't' I'm looking to return to some sort of honeymoon period so that you don't feel cheated and abused for spending on a program which you need due to stupid security holes and ignorant malicious script kiddies.
My antivirus experience is getting so bad, and so resource intensive, that I have taken to schooling every member of my family who use the computer and who will listen, and I am showing them how everything can be done as promptly on SuSE 9.1 Pro in KDE with Firefox and KMail. This switch is nothing to do with Windows frustrations which are relatively minor, this is just to do with lugubrious boot times and all those lost proc cycles.
When I got my first Linux distro I had broadband access, but being completely ignorant I bought a SuSE 9.1 Pro boxed distribution from a bookstore. The benefit of this being I get 5xCD and 2xDVD product, 32-bit and 64-bit forms, with complete source library for the apps that come bundled with it. Most important to any n00b, I also got a Linux users manual, and a Linux admin manual. More of these in bookstores would be a good development for people looking to investigate a Linux system on their older hardware after they upgrade.
I'd like to see an increase in the number of people who use Linux, and I'd like to suggest this as an avenue of focus to win people over. Sure, this way puts Linux at a moderate disadvantage because of the following factors:
1. they have to install it, which isn't tricky, but seems very daunting because it's counter to maintaining what is on the hard drive. Most users do, and should, stay very far away from options that format hard drives, which is why I think Linux should have some PR for it being an option to 're-animate' older/outmoded hardware.
2. It makes Linux seem automatically second best to the pre-installed OS with big name support, Windows on any major PC manufacturer's hardware, OS X on ppc/ppc64. However, isn't it better Linux be seen in second place on whatever hardware than not placing at all?
3. Buying a product makes you more willing to put at least some effort to getting some value or worth out of your purchase. If you 'splash' 90 for a distro like I did you're damn sure that that distro is going to be used and have some tweaks and customizations, and will be used to access the internet, while a free as in beer and speech download that's tricky (read Gentoo) is not perceived at such a loss if you give up on it before you emerge a GUI/desktop environment.
4. Having documentation in print form, in front of you at all times, even during a reboot, is sooooo much more helpful than the most verbose and sensible man page or README file. And if it doesn't cover the area you need it to, you can throw it across the room and your computer will be in the same state. Throwing whatever contains the man library or README across the room is notably more destructive.
I think shipping/selling Linux distros pre-installed is a good thing, and plays to Linux's strength in that it's a lot cheaper than proprietary operating systems, but I'd be more inclined to look at Linux as something you learn about when you make the switch, so if you want new users put them in the self-help section of a book store with all the "Teach yourself [insert random 3rd or 4th gen language here]" books which mostly come with software anyway.
If you put a boxed distro in a bookstore with proper advertising and charge $50 or less and plaster the fact that it's "A TOTAL ALTERNATIVE TO WINDOWS" on the stand you'll get people intrigued enough to make purchases.
Find an e-book you want to read in a relatively plain format, then take it down to.txt. If it was HTML you don't want any of those <, >, coding characters in there, so copying and pasting the text can be better than resaving a.html file as a.txt.
Next, use a split command to make your e-book into 4 KiB chunks. On Unix/Linux this is simple enough, do #man split# for details. On Windows there is a bunch of splitting applications left over from the days when files needed to be 1.44 MB for floppy disks. You'll want files to be labelled consistently with short titles incrementing logically. So, to chop up A Scanner Darkly, you'd make:
ASD-001
ASD-002
ASD-003 ......
ASD-998
ASD-999
Then export the files in a folder to your iPod in hard drive mode. Put them in the Notes folder.
Turn on your iPod, go to Notes, and start reading your 4,096 Byte text files on the move. Not exactly serialisation, but a handy way to keep whatever you are reading with you when you are going somewhere and can make bus journeys a lot easier than having nothing to read.
Any character after the 4,096th byte will not display on an iPod. And if you label them simply "ASD-1", "ASD-2", etc. You will have the usual problem of the files being ordered 1, 10, 11.... 2, 20, 21..., 998, 999. So be sure to leave the leading zeroes in there so you can read it in order. Making the titles longer than, at a guess, 15 characters, means you may not be able to see the end of the filename on an iPod's screen, so you won't know what number you are on, or what number to read next.
I can vouch for this method and have read Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep and Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather on my iPod's screen. Once you are used to it, it is a no-brainer to make the files the correct format.
The BBC is saying the damages caused were $1 million, not $1 billion. Blame asshat submitter.
I have made this mistake before while working as a journalist on radio. People nearly heard that the recent Bloody Sunday Inquiry cost a huge Ster £16, instead of £16 million. Chief sub wasn't too happy about that one.
Cool, you're probably right. But I'm completely code ignorant. Barely have enough HTML for Slashdot, couldn't read a line of Java or C++. All portage requires is two commands, emerge and unmerge. Then you just wait and the program is installed. Like I said, if it was hidden (optionally) so you didn't see the compiling, your average user might just think "that took a while, but it worked, and I only typed one line!"
I don't think Portage will separate from Gentoo in the near future, but I do think it'd be a good idea to integrate something very similar for the new Linux users. Give it a pretty GUI to keep you entertained, put every optional parameter as a clickable widget, and maybe integrate a game or distraction like a browser while you wait (I am, admittedly clutching at straws here) and I think people would use it. Needs good illustrated documentation too, but that'd be all it needs to work IMHO.
//btw I hate myself for this post, I sound like someone in marketing trying to talk to someone in engineering. I promised myself I'd never be *that guy*
After a brief look at this distro, which I've only just heard about, I'm intrigued. If it could run on a limited resources (96 MB RAM, 200 MHz Pentium II) I'd try it out.
As regards dependency hell, could a user friendly system like Symphony use Gentoo's Portage system, or Fink? Seems even an idiot like myself can use simple commands to do complicated things like:
# emerge --update --deep openoffice
Or get a copy of the GIMP without worrying about GTK+ dependencies, or Azureus without getting the JRE with a separate instruction for download and compiling.
After emerge you just have to track down the executable for the program after it's compiled. The compiling could even be hidden on a separate virtual desktop as an option to users who don't want to see things they don't understand.
I know it's not as idiot-proof as Apple's.app system, which seems clean and quick, but it's in use already, and Gentoo already has a substantial software library at its site Gentoo.org, so much so that I know OS X users who wouldn't use the system without Fink - which is different but comparable.
I see the case for considering this thread an advertisement, but if something is standards compliant and user friendly by design I think it's a good move for Linux spreading its market share. I think it's quite possible to give a good free system to new Linux users which is better and more fully featured than Lindows/Linspire, which I never liked despite the promise of Click'N'Run (CNR).
I agree, it was funny. You got to feel like George Best or Andy Gray. I think George Best missed his chance, but Andy Gray put one away for Villa, maybe in a final, before by heading the ball out of the keeper's hands didn't he?
Far better than the glitch in FIFA 99 on PS One which meant if you took a shot at the half way line it went in most of the time.
Christ did that franchise go down the pan quick. Rumours of improvements in later versions have been ignored here at 64nDh1 Mansions. It's Pro Evolution Soccer or nothing.
"So Terry, what did you think of the game"
"Well Brian, it was close"
"Thanks for that."
Genuinely, that's the entire contribution from Terry Butcher's voice on some matches. I'd be surprised if he recorded more than 20 sentences, and I'd be disappointed if he made a lot of cash from that stuff (he did Pro Evolution on PS One as well, and sequels).
I had to RTFA before I could think of any glitches, and I'm not sure the article exactly nails that game for its problems. I still play Pro Evo on PS2 and its gameplay isn't tarnished by its aging. However, the article makes a valid point about the commentary. Only Konami could think a commentator of any sport would ever really say something to the effect of "the crowd are getting restless, this game is really disappointing". Fine, if it's intended as a dig at the gamer that's no problem. But if a real commentator said that it'd be on a par with "why not turn your TV off and do something less dripping with sponsorship?"
That games predecessor was Internation Superstar Soccer on N64 where you knew you got away without punishment if you heard the commentator say "Oh a definite foul there". The soundbyte was only played if you made a dirty tackle and got away with it.
Last note on commentary, the worst ever is NHL 2002 on PS2. You can turn the colour commentary off thank god, but when on it's a never ending deluge of vacuous crap. When off, it's dry, boring factual mush. The most the earlier versions of this series (EA Hockey, NHLPA '93 etcetera) had were the organs and crowd noises. This was enough IMHO.
I've always found it quite welcome when you don't go looking for cheats, but end up working out how to beat parts of games. Things like in NHLPA '93 on Genesis/Mega Drive if no teammates were ahead of you and you pressed pass at the halfway line the puck went straight up the ice and under the goalkeeper. It was a goal that couldn't be stopped, but still tricky to accomplish. If you screwed it up it was icing, or a two line pass. And it was a pass, so it improved your stats if like me your anal about stuff like that, so you could actually win a game and have no record of any attempts on goal.
Glitches obviously can also be the ruination of a game, but they're not all bad.
I love Philip Glass. I listen to Glass Works and Solo Piano and Akhnaten all the time. I didn't mean to be disparaging. He's just an easy target.:-)
His film work is very distinctive, by which I mean, lazy mass produced crap irrelevant to what is being portrayed on screen IMHO, but his proper solo stuff (not so much the operas) is great.
Everyone knows what is going through Philip Glass' head when he composes or performs:
# I
# I can't
# I can't believe
# I can't believe I'm
# I can't believe I'm getting
# I can't believe I'm getting away
# I can't believe I'm getting away with
# I can't believe I'm getting away with this
# I can't believe I'm getting away with this crap
Slashdot Mirror
Using Disk Utility, I don't have the option of selecting the boot image. I don't know where to look for this option, it's not apparent. I created a disk image from the folder containing the 16 x86 OpenBSD files I downloaded and this measured 4.5 MB because I think it just grabbed one of those files (cd37.iso) and ignored the others.
So I tried Roxio Toast to do it, but it also has no option for El Burito/boot disk, nor can I change any settings for cdrom37.fs apart from the order Roxio sees the files in. I don't think putting that file top of the list will change how it is treated.
I searched for mkisofs, but this project is now no longer on its own, but subsumed into xcdrecord from what I can tell. Obtaining the source of that project from berliOS led to other difficulties - it's designed to *not* work with a make command under Darwin, but smake. So, I had to get the smake source, which I did, but I couldn't get that to compile either (it suggested I use smake).
I'm on a G5, so a floppy disk isn't an option.
I had thought from this quote, "OpenBSD doesn't make ISOs" (from here) that a DIY bootable CDR was the only option. I agree it should be a no brainer, but so far I've been frustrated by my own limitations because the method is not idiot proof.
To avoid duplication, previous post here.
Because OpenBSD isn't available in a user friendly (read idiot proof) .iso download?
Personally, I want to try OpenBSD 3.7, I have the files, but no mkisofs means the instructions I've found to make the damn image are not straightforward.
I know you've got your reasons, but if you're going to ask publicly 'why don't people use this lovely secure system?' then you have to ask yourself, 'why don't we make it more accessible to n00bs?'
There are a few:
Font Agent Pro
Font Finagler (a cache manager)
And others
I hit just shy of 6,000 fonts, and my system was heading for the wall before I started with Font Agent. It takes all fonts, gives you a preview of your typefaces, then you can opt to turn them off, so that Font Book isn't working with so much baggage for general tasks. It isn't quite like uninstalling fonts, they auto-activate as required. But it's a makeshift solution to getting a slightly improved functionality on a Mac with a lot of fonts.
I have got rid of all except the basic fonts I need after filenames and other things left my browser looking like something in Klingon, so I don't screw with them anymore.
However, I shouldn't offer false hope. Microsoft Word has it's own software to scan your font library, so even if the fonts are deactivated, Word will still throw a tantrum for whatever reason, and take hours to load on first instance with huge numbers of fonts. Sorry.
Last I checked Disk Warrior wasn't Tiger compatible, but it will show the general health of the data layout on a partition. Mine were in a real bad state due to the upgrade, with Activity Monitor showing frequent use of 70% proc resources.
I wiped a second hard drive (which only contained backup data, no outright loss), clean installed Tiger, then when the Firewire Import existing data option came up, I pointed it to the existing Tiger installation on the other hard drive. It ported across all my apps, documents, etcetera, all unscathed give or take a few programs looking for the serial numbers again. No re-installations except maybe Norton.
Then, due to fears of fragmentation happening again, I made a partition scheme with disk space divided by content type, so I replaced my Documents folder with an alias pointing to the /Volumes/Documents drive, and for Movies, Music and Pictures.
Now Activity Monitor shows proc usage dropping to a steady 5-10% (in as much as you can tell from the bars on screen).
Really hope that is of some assistance, I know others who had to clean re-install Tiger, but the benefits were worth it.
I will show you a room which contains two computers:
2.26 GHz Dell P4 - Windows XP SP2 with Norton 2005
200 MHz Bastard P2 - No current OS, multiple available
You call me ahead of arriving at my house and I will put your choice of Linux/BSD/Windows that I have available on that second box. Then show you that the 200 MHz PC is faster than the 2+ GHz Dell when Norton is doing a full system scan.
Maybe the proc is weighed down by other things, it's unrealistic it could take a 90% performance hit, but my drives are as fragmentation free as is reasonably expected of a home user, so that's not a factor. Still, it's more pleasant during scans to use the bucket that was liberated from the junkyard than the proper PC, so much so I don't run weekly scans anymore.
Read above as:
The screenshots I've seen show a really, really cool clock on the desktop. No really. It's quite spiffy.
Really.
It's this and the groundbreaking RSS shiznit that shows the sort of innovation that will make users more than willing to lose 10% of the damn desktop to the stupid taskbar (maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like it's grown morbidly obese).
Other than that, ooooh.... um, we have a new file system to look forward to I think, which is definitely better than those stupid Mac users who got to leave all their documents and applications (give or take the compatibility issues) and just install Tiger under the existing Panther installation.
Not for Longhorn users. If you're upgrading, you'll have to wipe the NTFS partition. I'd like to know if Longhorn can mount NTFS, so maybe you could migrate your documents, but I doubt it.
Other than that.... well, no plans to mimic/outright steal Dashboard just yet, did I mention the clock?
That button is missing for me now. I don't know whether it's disabled by an option, or removed by design.
Outlook is an MS app, so it has the same vulnerability to .jpg files that cause exploit potential as IE or Explorer.
If it need be said, on Windows I use Thunderbird. KMail on SuSE and Gentoo. And I'm strongly thinking about regressing to MacMail on OS X because Entourage isn't worth the idiosyncrasies that I've found it to have.
Basically, if you close Entourage while a network operation (mail retrieval) is in progress it warns you about it. If you go ahead and quit then it just hangs. The other day it prompted me to relaunch Finder before Force Quitting Entourage. Today it prevented the system (G5) from shutting down. All I wanted was a calendar and some value added to a mail client. I can't believe I looked to Microsoft for that.
And this is the same.... Oh, you worked that out.
:)
Say I'm working on a word processor or image document, and it has a temporary file before it's saved, then if there is any sort of migration of data which occurs when the program is scanning then VirusBarrier says the file has no contents and warns you not to open it.
Common sense prevailing, this is a really small irk to the user, but on-the-fly scanning is well and good but has shortcomings in certain instances. But disabling incoming email scanning is asking for trouble. What of the corrupted jpg files that work over the .dll files in XP if viewed in a lot of Microsoft apps? Look at a hacked file with .jpg extension in Outlook and you've got a problem. The best way to protect against it is to keep the scanning on.
In my experience, if it isn't a full system scan, or startup time, then I can just about live with the lost cycles if I need to, and I do for HL2 and some other wanton wastes of resources.
Norton Antivirus, despite regular updates by LiveUpdate, does not give full scans in that it does not find certain very frikkin' major trojans on any Windows system. The Shinwow virus that still resides on my XP system is a case in point, as is the Java byte exploit which allowed another user on the system to accidentally have it put there by some scurrilous website,
On Mac Norton Antivirus lost a lot of respect, and a lot of Mac users will just tell you that AV is for suckers anyway, but Norton pissed off people when their existing disk utilities (Speed Disk, Disk Doctor I think) which handled drive optimization was not Panther compatible. Certain people (those running the 10.2 Norton on Panther 10.3) lost complete functionality on their hard drives ("churning" is how I saw it described) requiring formatting with (AFAIK) no chance of file recovery. Same goes with using Norton 9 on Tiger - don't.
When using Norton Antivirus year on year the 'upgrades' mean that your boot time, and logon times increase. See my first point that this does not mean that you are more protected as at least one older known trojan is still undetected by a full system scan.
If you enable Program Launch Monitoring then Norton will tell you about absolutely every little thing that accesses the internet. This is a good thing, but from what I can see, they've taken out the damn option to "Don't show me this bullshit again, of course Firefox is going online!" and it keeps happening.
Just earlier today, I let Norton integrate itself into my Dad's mail client, Outlook Express, then I got 5 warnings that NORTON was being called by another program, and accessing the internet. This isn't even the veil of a false sense of protection. I increasingly think this junk is being coded by morons. Compared to each other, EZ Armour, eTrust Antivirus whatever it's called runs a scan faster, finds more, and I trust it more. It's not any worse to boot speeds. And while 'the devil you know is better than the devil you don't' I'm looking to return to some sort of honeymoon period so that you don't feel cheated and abused for spending on a program which you need due to stupid security holes and ignorant malicious script kiddies.
My antivirus experience is getting so bad, and so resource intensive, that I have taken to schooling every member of my family who use the computer and who will listen, and I am showing them how everything can be done as promptly on SuSE 9.1 Pro in KDE with Firefox and KMail. This switch is nothing to do with Windows frustrations which are relatively minor, this is just to do with lugubrious boot times and all those lost proc cycles.
I'll take a +1 Social Retard and a +2 Tragic then.
I'd like to see an increase in the number of people who use Linux, and I'd like to suggest this as an avenue of focus to win people over. Sure, this way puts Linux at a moderate disadvantage because of the following factors:
1. they have to install it, which isn't tricky, but seems very daunting because it's counter to maintaining what is on the hard drive. Most users do, and should, stay very far away from options that format hard drives, which is why I think Linux should have some PR for it being an option to 're-animate' older/outmoded hardware.
2. It makes Linux seem automatically second best to the pre-installed OS with big name support, Windows on any major PC manufacturer's hardware, OS X on ppc/ppc64. However, isn't it better Linux be seen in second place on whatever hardware than not placing at all?
3. Buying a product makes you more willing to put at least some effort to getting some value or worth out of your purchase. If you 'splash' 90 for a distro like I did you're damn sure that that distro is going to be used and have some tweaks and customizations, and will be used to access the internet, while a free as in beer and speech download that's tricky (read Gentoo) is not perceived at such a loss if you give up on it before you emerge a GUI/desktop environment.
4. Having documentation in print form, in front of you at all times, even during a reboot, is sooooo much more helpful than the most verbose and sensible man page or README file. And if it doesn't cover the area you need it to, you can throw it across the room and your computer will be in the same state. Throwing whatever contains the man library or README across the room is notably more destructive.
I think shipping/selling Linux distros pre-installed is a good thing, and plays to Linux's strength in that it's a lot cheaper than proprietary operating systems, but I'd be more inclined to look at Linux as something you learn about when you make the switch, so if you want new users put them in the self-help section of a book store with all the "Teach yourself [insert random 3rd or 4th gen language here]" books which mostly come with software anyway.
If you put a boxed distro in a bookstore with proper advertising and charge $50 or less and plaster the fact that it's "A TOTAL ALTERNATIVE TO WINDOWS" on the stand you'll get people intrigued enough to make purchases.
Alternatively, tell me why I'm wrong.
Unfortunately, SW prequel suckage is a universal constant.
Next, use a split command to make your e-book into 4 KiB chunks. On Unix/Linux this is simple enough, do #man split# for details. On Windows there is a bunch of splitting applications left over from the days when files needed to be 1.44 MB for floppy disks. You'll want files to be labelled consistently with short titles incrementing logically. So, to chop up A Scanner Darkly, you'd make:
ASD-001
......
ASD-002
ASD-003
ASD-998
ASD-999
Then export the files in a folder to your iPod in hard drive mode. Put them in the Notes folder.
Turn on your iPod, go to Notes, and start reading your 4,096 Byte text files on the move. Not exactly serialisation, but a handy way to keep whatever you are reading with you when you are going somewhere and can make bus journeys a lot easier than having nothing to read.
Any character after the 4,096th byte will not display on an iPod. And if you label them simply "ASD-1", "ASD-2", etc. You will have the usual problem of the files being ordered 1, 10, 11.... 2, 20, 21..., 998, 999. So be sure to leave the leading zeroes in there so you can read it in order. Making the titles longer than, at a guess, 15 characters, means you may not be able to see the end of the filename on an iPod's screen, so you won't know what number you are on, or what number to read next.
I can vouch for this method and have read Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep and Terry Pratchett's The Hogfather on my iPod's screen. Once you are used to it, it is a no-brainer to make the files the correct format.
I have made this mistake before while working as a journalist on radio. People nearly heard that the recent Bloody Sunday Inquiry cost a huge Ster £16, instead of £16 million. Chief sub wasn't too happy about that one.
I don't think Portage will separate from Gentoo in the near future, but I do think it'd be a good idea to integrate something very similar for the new Linux users. Give it a pretty GUI to keep you entertained, put every optional parameter as a clickable widget, and maybe integrate a game or distraction like a browser while you wait (I am, admittedly clutching at straws here) and I think people would use it. Needs good illustrated documentation too, but that'd be all it needs to work IMHO.
As regards dependency hell, could a user friendly system like Symphony use Gentoo's Portage system, or Fink? Seems even an idiot like myself can use simple commands to do complicated things like:
# emerge --update --deep openoffice
Or get a copy of the GIMP without worrying about GTK+ dependencies, or Azureus without getting the JRE with a separate instruction for download and compiling.
After emerge you just have to track down the executable for the program after it's compiled. The compiling could even be hidden on a separate virtual desktop as an option to users who don't want to see things they don't understand.
I know it's not as idiot-proof as Apple's .app system, which seems clean and quick, but it's in use already, and Gentoo already has a substantial software library at its site Gentoo.org, so much so that I know OS X users who wouldn't use the system without Fink - which is different but comparable.
I see the case for considering this thread an advertisement, but if something is standards compliant and user friendly by design I think it's a good move for Linux spreading its market share. I think it's quite possible to give a good free system to new Linux users which is better and more fully featured than Lindows/Linspire, which I never liked despite the promise of Click'N'Run (CNR).
Far better than the glitch in FIFA 99 on PS One which meant if you took a shot at the half way line it went in most of the time.
Christ did that franchise go down the pan quick. Rumours of improvements in later versions have been ignored here at 64nDh1 Mansions. It's Pro Evolution Soccer or nothing.
"So Terry, what did you think of the game"
"Well Brian, it was close"
"Thanks for that."
Genuinely, that's the entire contribution from Terry Butcher's voice on some matches. I'd be surprised if he recorded more than 20 sentences, and I'd be disappointed if he made a lot of cash from that stuff (he did Pro Evolution on PS One as well, and sequels).
That games predecessor was Internation Superstar Soccer on N64 where you knew you got away without punishment if you heard the commentator say "Oh a definite foul there". The soundbyte was only played if you made a dirty tackle and got away with it.
Last note on commentary, the worst ever is NHL 2002 on PS2. You can turn the colour commentary off thank god, but when on it's a never ending deluge of vacuous crap. When off, it's dry, boring factual mush. The most the earlier versions of this series (EA Hockey, NHLPA '93 etcetera) had were the organs and crowd noises. This was enough IMHO.
Glitches obviously can also be the ruination of a game, but they're not all bad.
His film work is very distinctive, by which I mean, lazy mass produced crap irrelevant to what is being portrayed on screen IMHO, but his proper solo stuff (not so much the operas) is great.
Everyone knows what is going through Philip Glass' head when he composes or performs:
# I
# I can't
# I can't believe
# I can't believe I'm
# I can't believe I'm getting
# I can't believe I'm getting away
# I can't believe I'm getting away with
# I can't believe I'm getting away with this
# I can't believe I'm getting away with this crap
[Repeat until fade - make an adequate fortune]