I spend most of my time/.ing from a corporate environment, where we're forced into IE6. When I occasionally read up from home using FF+AB I've less compunction about it as I know there's plenty of adclicks from the work connection.
Agreed - I experimented with nLite integrating the critical updates only (up to about a year ago, which is the time I messed around with it). The machine built OK, but then System File Checker complained about massive numbers of files. I ended up having to bare-metal the machine again and restart.
For any type of business use Windows Server Update Services is worth investigating. I've moved over to that following testing another couple of methods of mass-deploying Windows updates without great success. While WSUS doesn't seem a panacaea (in particular I still seem to be downloading a number of updates from the 'web, despite them being configured at the WSUS end), it at least reduces the amount of time spent pulling the couple of hundred meg post-SP2 of updates needed to get XP into a current state.
I'm cautiously optimistic about SP3 though. Just let me slipstream it onto an XP CD and I'll be happy again.
I posted a while ago because my free/low-cost repair sideline was getting out of hand. In particular, one family who were endemically clueless had turned into complete time sinks. This was affecting the time I had available to meet family commitments, and was severely affecting my social life.
The situations in the article may be extreme, but balancing those situations with the idea that "geeks often provide free / cheap resources" (quoted from several posts above, not parent's) also leads to problems. Performing work for low costs just ends up with your customers undervaluing your time/effort.
It's the same dissociation from technology that leads to a user being gouged, that also leads to the same user undervaluing their local geek's time/effort/skillset - it's that the user has a complete disconnect from the technology and neither understands nor cares about the situation. It's also unfortunate that the only way the user is going to be able to assess the amount of work that is necessary is if they start to understand their machines.
Any home-based stuff that is charged at a reasonable rate (reasonable to us as informed/.ers) will expand to fit all available time, as the parent quite rightly points out. While I never got to the stage of taking time off my day job to fulfil my home-based work, nights in with 5-6 machines being concurrently diagnosed/repaired weren't uncommon for me. As a result, my other responsibilities got neglected.
For the record, I talked to the bloke that elicited the earlier post, explained the situation, and asked that he find someone else to sort out his problems. It didn't work, and six months later I was still receiving calls from the guy asking for tech support help. In the end I had to break out the cluebat +4 of derision before he finally got the message. I'm still doing sideline work, but it's been a whole lot more on my own terms recently.
You could use AT to schedule a "shutdown -f -r -t 5" once a day, at (e.g.) 01:00 - assuming you're auto-logging in to a session, and your software is set to autostart afterwards.
It's worth noting that Lord Justice Sedley, who called for the expansion of the database, recommended that "The entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on the national DNA database, a top judge said today." [emphasis mine].
Lord Sedley is said to have taken fairly liberal stands historically, so it is entirely possible that these comments were intended to raise awareness and controversy over this particular issue. I agree with him wholeheartedly that the current implementation specifically targets ethnic and social groups and that this is a grevious wrong. However the expansion of the database is a truly horrifying idea.
It is also worth noting that the groundwork for the use of DNA for and by parties unrelated to law enforcement has already been laid. This should raise serious concerns.
As has been commented earlier - it is wrong for a government to treat all its citizens as potential criminals. This broadens the scope of this wrong even further. Were these proposals to come to fruition, my government would be treating everyone in the world as a potential criminal. And I thought we were reasonably laid-back compared to the USA.
You can do it by having the parent supervise the child's online activities. We're not talking about monitoring every URL and IM that passes about, but keep the PC in a room used by multiple people and keep an eye on it. This will probably also reduce the chances of shitware getting onto the system.
People looking for a technological solution to a social problem have already got a faulty preconception of how to tackle the issue.
If the parent is not willing to supervise their offspring's activities, then they will be able to not only access pornography, but also content that is (to my mind) far more distasteful: racial hate sites and the like.
I'll agree with you on the burn engine - I rarely use anything else. But I am with GP that they bundle an inordinate amount of cr4p on the disc these days.
I've been using Nero since v4.01, which came bundled with my second SCSI CD burner. However for me the golden age was the period of v5.5 -> v6.3, where they did everything well with a reasonable footprint.
IIRC a full install of a current version of Nero 7 weighs in at about 1.1GB - WTF is that about?!
But I ran across a problem with RP10 that annoyed me to the point of not installing it.
I run as pretty-much admin on my home Windows box. However, sick of the proliferation of crap that adds itself to the Start Menu -> Startup, or HKLM....Run keys (jusched.exe and adobe, I'm talking to you here), I dropped permissions on that directory and those keys to read-only for my account, reasoning I could use privilege escalation if I needed to work with them.
I later wanted to listen to something from the BBC which required Realplayer, and so picked up the installer.
Bear in mind that this is an admin account _EXCEPT_ for access to HKLM...Run and Startup. The realplayer installer just fell over indicating that it needed administrative privileges to run - in essence, failing unless it could install its crapware (tkbell.exe, IIRC) into my system's startup.
To software manufacturers: I don't mind waiting a couple of extra seconds on my rig for an application to start up. In fact, if each of you stopped adding junk that expects to be run every time I start my damn machine, it probably wouldn't take so long anyway. Every TSR you try and inflict upon me is a black mark against you. And refusing to install without having permission to insert junk into my system's startup will result in your software being blacklisted.
For software that attempts to auto-update, a TSR is not necessary. IMO Firefox / Thunderbird have it right. Periodically check for updates when the application is in use, and notify (don't force) that an app restart is necessary to finish the install.
And as for the bloated excesses of driver/TSR combos for scanners and printers I've seen on other people's machines, these guarantee that I will neither buy nor recommend anything from that manufacturer ever.
F_T
They got the poison headcrabs just right in HL2. From the sound effects, to the tarantula-inspired banding on the legs and the hairiness... urgh.
I recently bought a HD-Tv - explicitly for Bioshock. While waiting for my copy to arrive, I put HL2 back on and raced through the first couple of levels. I ended up having to switch off partway through Ravenholm - even though I've completed the game a few times previously. The bigger visuals, more expansive sub and sensory overload drew me in just as effectively as it did first time around.
[Still, I remember screaming like a girl at the Scrags in "The Air Tunnels" in Quake 1, many years ago.]
"The guy did steal, he is being punished, and he is confined to home, but they make him purchase Windows? This is what I really find objectionable, how the hell is somebody who is unemployed supposed to purchase Windows?"
Come on, do you mean to tell me a pirate won't already have a load of warezed copies of Windows? Sheesh.
For example what if it was later found that the man had been purposely been using the connection for illegal activity. Is the owner of the wifi access point truly at fault?
Absolutely. It's called aiding and abetting.
F_T
"Just because you don't understand how everything works with something, doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to use it"
No. But it means you should EXPECT to familiarise yourself with its workings.
Use power tools while standing in a half-filled bathtub and you are running a RISK that RTFMing will probably have clued you up on.
Didn't familiarise yourself with the microwave oven manual and got burnt? I have no sympathy.
Didn't RTFM about securing your wireless? In this case you have someone harmlessly leeching a bit of bandwidth. It could be equally easily someone sniffing the traffic of the owner, which could lead to actual harm/loss to the access point's owner. In either case, the *owner* is at fault for not learning how to use the equipment correctly.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Perhaps the AP manufacturers should make things 'easier to understand'. I'm not so certain myself. IT systems are a difficult and unforgiving discipline, and trying to wrap the actual workings of a system in fluff does a disservice to the (possibly elite) customer who wants to understand what's going on, and to the people that have to pick up the pieces when a muppet has failed to understand what they were doing or why they were doing it.
Personally, I'd like to see a definitive test case on this subject as it seems it is a grey area.
Sorry, but I have to take exception to the idea that Windows users require a reinstall once a year as this is pretty outdated, FUD.
I'll agree in the dark days of Windows 98 the system was so corrupted via wonky file tables and registry corruption that a reinstall was frequently necessary to recover from a fault.
However under Windows 2000 and XP I've seen machines, operated by home users without a great deal of technical knowledge, that have worked solidly for years. Even on the occasions where I've had to disinfect a machine from some cr4pware, it's been extremely rare that I've seen an XP machine sufficiently bolloxed that it's needed a reinstall. I've even had a couple of XP Home machines happily restart on their original OS install after having motherboard/CPU upgrade/replacement.
Yes, there are cases where something particularly insidious has gotten onto a system that requires sufficient security that you have no viable alternative but to nuke it from orbit, and there are the irredeemable section out there that will try their best to install every single piece of sh!tware available, but I've seen the idea of "having to reinstall" move from the mindset of those who think, it's inevitable due to poor operating system design, to those who lack the skills to recover an NT-based box.
At my previous job at a telco, we'd just upgraded from NT4 to XP.
Now please note that (1) this is anecdotal, (2) I wasn't affected by this user profile myself so had very little time to experiment and (3) I changed jobs shortly afterwards.
But for the generic helpdesk accounts, the IT guys had seriously done their homework. A user had no access to the file system at all. You couldn't get to it via browser, and the start menu contained only the basic applications (notably, terminal emulators connected to Unix bigiron) that were used by the helpdesc.
I experimented with a number of methods on to try and gain access to the system, but wasn't able to find anything that would permit access. Nada.
Take from this what you will, but it's possible to secure a Windows system pretty damn well if you're prepared to take the time and effort. And that is where I believe this organisation has been lacking.
If they had been using an alternative o/s, what evidence is there that the relevant management would have made an effort to secure it? None that I can see.
I'm posting from a corporate network with limited credentials. Whether our accounts are set as 'power user' or just 'user' I can't currently tell. However my base account isn't given full privilege over the file system, etc. Limited user a/c as far as I can tell.
However, setting up and changing file associations using assoc / ftype is perfectly permissible.
And as others have said, runas is perfectly adequate for you to get access to elevated privileges. For the record, the following may come in handy:
runas/user:(admin account) cmd.exe
Command prompt shell which will do about 90% of what you want to do, including the ability to spawn processes with admin privilege
While it's nice to debate the hypotheticals of such a situation, the sad fact is that in the real world pragmatism and greed wins out.
Therefore, if you are foolish / unlucky enough to overpay someone, you lose. If you get extra change from a retailer, you win.
If you get an overpayment (happened to me once where the bank was paying out £20 notes instead of £10 notes) you win. However if (as later happened) the bank corrects it, too bad.
All you can do is perform sufficient checks with your cash to ensure you're not getting hammered too egregiously. A case could be argued that the whole profit / loss system is what keeps money flowing in local economies anyway.
It's nice to be able to think that we all are completely moral and ethical creatures, but ultimately we're all as selfish and corrupt as the businesses we have created.
that "Centre" is in fact spelled correctly. It's "Color" that's wrong;-)
Perhaps both Centre and Center, and Color and Colour, could be considered syntactically equivalent for the purposes of rendering, to cater for differing regional variants of English?
Slashdot Mirror
I spend most of my time /.ing from a corporate environment, where we're forced into IE6. When I occasionally read up from home using FF+AB I've less compunction about it as I know there's plenty of adclicks from the work connection.
Agreed - I experimented with nLite integrating the critical updates only (up to about a year ago, which is the time I messed around with it). The machine built OK, but then System File Checker complained about massive numbers of files. I ended up having to bare-metal the machine again and restart.
For any type of business use Windows Server Update Services is worth investigating. I've moved over to that following testing another couple of methods of mass-deploying Windows updates without great success. While WSUS doesn't seem a panacaea (in particular I still seem to be downloading a number of updates from the 'web, despite them being configured at the WSUS end), it at least reduces the amount of time spent pulling the couple of hundred meg post-SP2 of updates needed to get XP into a current state.
I'm cautiously optimistic about SP3 though. Just let me slipstream it onto an XP CD and I'll be happy again.
F_T
I posted a while ago because my free/low-cost repair sideline was getting out of hand. In particular, one family who were endemically clueless had turned into complete time sinks. This was affecting the time I had available to meet family commitments, and was severely affecting my social life.
/.ers) will expand to fit all available time, as the parent quite rightly points out. While I never got to the stage of taking time off my day job to fulfil my home-based work, nights in with 5-6 machines being concurrently diagnosed/repaired weren't uncommon for me. As a result, my other responsibilities got neglected.
The situations in the article may be extreme, but balancing those situations with the idea that "geeks often provide free / cheap resources" (quoted from several posts above, not parent's) also leads to problems. Performing work for low costs just ends up with your customers undervaluing your time/effort.
It's the same dissociation from technology that leads to a user being gouged, that also leads to the same user undervaluing their local geek's time/effort/skillset - it's that the user has a complete disconnect from the technology and neither understands nor cares about the situation. It's also unfortunate that the only way the user is going to be able to assess the amount of work that is necessary is if they start to understand their machines.
Any home-based stuff that is charged at a reasonable rate (reasonable to us as informed
For the record, I talked to the bloke that elicited the earlier post, explained the situation, and asked that he find someone else to sort out his problems. It didn't work, and six months later I was still receiving calls from the guy asking for tech support help. In the end I had to break out the cluebat +4 of derision before he finally got the message. I'm still doing sideline work, but it's been a whole lot more on my own terms recently.
You could use AT to schedule a "shutdown -f -r -t 5" once a day, at (e.g.) 01:00 - assuming you're auto-logging in to a session, and your software is set to autostart afterwards.
F_T
It's worth noting that Lord Justice Sedley, who called for the expansion of the database, recommended that "The entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on the national DNA database, a top judge said today." [emphasis mine].
Lord Sedley is said to have taken fairly liberal stands historically, so it is entirely possible that these comments were intended to raise awareness and controversy over this particular issue. I agree with him wholeheartedly that the current implementation specifically targets ethnic and social groups and that this is a grevious wrong. However the expansion of the database is a truly horrifying idea.
It is also worth noting that the groundwork for the use of DNA for and by parties unrelated to law enforcement has already been laid. This should raise serious concerns.
As has been commented earlier - it is wrong for a government to treat all its citizens as potential criminals. This broadens the scope of this wrong even further. Were these proposals to come to fruition, my government would be treating everyone in the world as a potential criminal. And I thought we were reasonably laid-back compared to the USA.
F_T
You can do it by having the parent supervise the child's online activities. We're not talking about monitoring every URL and IM that passes about, but keep the PC in a room used by multiple people and keep an eye on it. This will probably also reduce the chances of shitware getting onto the system.
People looking for a technological solution to a social problem have already got a faulty preconception of how to tackle the issue.
If the parent is not willing to supervise their offspring's activities, then they will be able to not only access pornography, but also content that is (to my mind) far more distasteful: racial hate sites and the like.
F_T
For a minute I though I'd wandered into /b/.
That'll be that superstring theory I've been hearing about.
F_T
I'll agree with you on the burn engine - I rarely use anything else. But I am with GP that they bundle an inordinate amount of cr4p on the disc these days.
I've been using Nero since v4.01, which came bundled with my second SCSI CD burner. However for me the golden age was the period of v5.5 -> v6.3, where they did everything well with a reasonable footprint.
IIRC a full install of a current version of Nero 7 weighs in at about 1.1GB - WTF is that about?!
But I ran across a problem with RP10 that annoyed me to the point of not installing it. I run as pretty-much admin on my home Windows box. However, sick of the proliferation of crap that adds itself to the Start Menu -> Startup, or HKLM....Run keys (jusched.exe and adobe, I'm talking to you here), I dropped permissions on that directory and those keys to read-only for my account, reasoning I could use privilege escalation if I needed to work with them. I later wanted to listen to something from the BBC which required Realplayer, and so picked up the installer. Bear in mind that this is an admin account _EXCEPT_ for access to HKLM...Run and Startup. The realplayer installer just fell over indicating that it needed administrative privileges to run - in essence, failing unless it could install its crapware (tkbell.exe, IIRC) into my system's startup. To software manufacturers: I don't mind waiting a couple of extra seconds on my rig for an application to start up. In fact, if each of you stopped adding junk that expects to be run every time I start my damn machine, it probably wouldn't take so long anyway. Every TSR you try and inflict upon me is a black mark against you. And refusing to install without having permission to insert junk into my system's startup will result in your software being blacklisted. For software that attempts to auto-update, a TSR is not necessary. IMO Firefox / Thunderbird have it right. Periodically check for updates when the application is in use, and notify (don't force) that an app restart is necessary to finish the install. And as for the bloated excesses of driver/TSR combos for scanners and printers I've seen on other people's machines, these guarantee that I will neither buy nor recommend anything from that manufacturer ever. F_T
(insert sound of coffee spraying across room)
Well played.
F_T
They got the poison headcrabs just right in HL2. From the sound effects, to the tarantula-inspired banding on the legs and the hairiness... urgh.
I recently bought a HD-Tv - explicitly for Bioshock. While waiting for my copy to arrive, I put HL2 back on and raced through the first couple of levels. I ended up having to switch off partway through Ravenholm - even though I've completed the game a few times previously. The bigger visuals, more expansive sub and sensory overload drew me in just as effectively as it did first time around.
[Still, I remember screaming like a girl at the Scrags in "The Air Tunnels" in Quake 1, many years ago.]
F_T
"The guy did steal, he is being punished, and he is confined to home, but they make him purchase Windows? This is what I really find objectionable, how the hell is somebody who is unemployed supposed to purchase Windows?"
Come on, do you mean to tell me a pirate won't already have a load of warezed copies of Windows? Sheesh.
F_T
For example what if it was later found that the man had been purposely been using the connection for illegal activity. Is the owner of the wifi access point truly at fault? Absolutely. It's called aiding and abetting. F_T
"Just because you don't understand how everything works with something, doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to use it"
No. But it means you should EXPECT to familiarise yourself with its workings.
Use power tools while standing in a half-filled bathtub and you are running a RISK that RTFMing will probably have clued you up on.
Didn't familiarise yourself with the microwave oven manual and got burnt? I have no sympathy.
Didn't RTFM about securing your wireless? In this case you have someone harmlessly leeching a bit of bandwidth. It could be equally easily someone sniffing the traffic of the owner, which could lead to actual harm/loss to the access point's owner. In either case, the *owner* is at fault for not learning how to use the equipment correctly.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Perhaps the AP manufacturers should make things 'easier to understand'. I'm not so certain myself. IT systems are a difficult and unforgiving discipline, and trying to wrap the actual workings of a system in fluff does a disservice to the (possibly elite) customer who wants to understand what's going on, and to the people that have to pick up the pieces when a muppet has failed to understand what they were doing or why they were doing it.
Personally, I'd like to see a definitive test case on this subject as it seems it is a grey area.
Sorry, but I have to take exception to the idea that Windows users require a reinstall once a year as this is pretty outdated, FUD.
I'll agree in the dark days of Windows 98 the system was so corrupted via wonky file tables and registry corruption that a reinstall was frequently necessary to recover from a fault.
However under Windows 2000 and XP I've seen machines, operated by home users without a great deal of technical knowledge, that have worked solidly for years. Even on the occasions where I've had to disinfect a machine from some cr4pware, it's been extremely rare that I've seen an XP machine sufficiently bolloxed that it's needed a reinstall. I've even had a couple of XP Home machines happily restart on their original OS install after having motherboard/CPU upgrade/replacement.
Yes, there are cases where something particularly insidious has gotten onto a system that requires sufficient security that you have no viable alternative but to nuke it from orbit, and there are the irredeemable section out there that will try their best to install every single piece of sh!tware available, but I've seen the idea of "having to reinstall" move from the mindset of those who think, it's inevitable due to poor operating system design, to those who lack the skills to recover an NT-based box.
surely it'd be kLeptomaniac, no?
At my previous job at a telco, we'd just upgraded from NT4 to XP.
Now please note that (1) this is anecdotal, (2) I wasn't affected by this user profile myself so had very little time to experiment and (3) I changed jobs shortly afterwards.
But for the generic helpdesk accounts, the IT guys had seriously done their homework. A user had no access to the file system at all. You couldn't get to it via browser, and the start menu contained only the basic applications (notably, terminal emulators connected to Unix bigiron) that were used by the helpdesc.
I experimented with a number of methods on to try and gain access to the system, but wasn't able to find anything that would permit access. Nada.
Take from this what you will, but it's possible to secure a Windows system pretty damn well if you're prepared to take the time and effort. And that is where I believe this organisation has been lacking.
If they had been using an alternative o/s, what evidence is there that the relevant management would have made an effort to secure it? None that I can see.
But they'd have still been way off.
For a decimal megabyte versus a binary one, there's 48 1/2 KB difference.
For a gigabyte, there's about 70 megabytes difference.
The only case where you'd only lose 24 bytes would be if you had a kilobyte drive.
F_T
I'm posting from a corporate network with limited credentials. Whether our accounts are set as 'power user' or just 'user' I can't currently tell. However my base account isn't given full privilege over the file system, etc. Limited user a/c as far as I can tell.
/user:(admin account) cmd.exe
/user:(admin account) "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe c:"
However, setting up and changing file associations using assoc / ftype is perfectly permissible.
And as others have said, runas is perfectly adequate for you to get access to elevated privileges. For the record, the following may come in handy:
runas
Command prompt shell which will do about 90% of what you want to do, including the ability to spawn processes with admin privilege
runas
Spawns a shell under admin privileges for anything you can't do with command prompt.
F_T
That's either the best sarcasm I have ever witnessed or the most unfortunate of ironies. I'm not certain which.
F_T
While it's nice to debate the hypotheticals of such a situation, the sad fact is that in the real world pragmatism and greed wins out.
Therefore, if you are foolish / unlucky enough to overpay someone, you lose. If you get extra change from a retailer, you win.
If you get an overpayment (happened to me once where the bank was paying out £20 notes instead of £10 notes) you win. However if (as later happened) the bank corrects it, too bad.
All you can do is perform sufficient checks with your cash to ensure you're not getting hammered too egregiously. A case could be argued that the whole profit / loss system is what keeps money flowing in local economies anyway.
It's nice to be able to think that we all are completely moral and ethical creatures, but ultimately we're all as selfish and corrupt as the businesses we have created.
Just my 0.02.
That's "bastardised", dear boy :-)
that "Centre" is in fact spelled correctly. It's "Color" that's wrong ;-)
Perhaps both Centre and Center, and Color and Colour, could be considered syntactically equivalent for the purposes of rendering, to cater for differing regional variants of English?
F_T
Apparently it's protected by serial codes and online activation. FYI the serials are 30195-0005315-51142 09 F9 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 F_T