Where I live (Northeast Arkansas) AT&T coverage is pretty spotty. Verizon is much better, though there's a big dead zone right on the AR/MO border. Once you cross into Southeast Missouri, Verizon coverage starts getting spotty. I'm with Verizon because my AT&T phone wouldn't ring when I was at home. Took the phone back within 2 days and got out of contract. AT&T still tried to bill me $640 early termination fee, though, took over an hour on the phone to sort THAT out.
This. Don't expect your family to know how to get into your digital copy, and don't expect it to last as long as good, old-fashioned paper. A safety deposit box is great for long-term documents, and a small fire-proof safe at home is good enough for keeping frequently-changed things like passwords. Note that you should not keep REALLY important documents in a home safe, especially a small one, as a thief can simply pick it up, walk out, and drill the lock at his convenience.
Of course my notebook doubles as entertainment when I travel, and I usually have a handful of DVD's or Blu-rays to watch. If I didn't have an optical drive, I'd have to convert my collection on my desktop and transfer to my notebook, a time consuming proposition considering how large my collection is and how lazy I am.
PDFs are great when you want to save a document for later, offline use. Like a product manual, which one may refer to once in a while. You can refer to your local copy, and not have to download it every time.
PDF's are also great for preserving the formatting on documents. It takes a lot of effort to get the formatting to appear exactly the way you want it to in HTML in every browser. Now imagine you have 5,000 separate product manuals, which one can either simply and easily export to PDF, or have the headache of converting to HTML (and losing portions of the formatting in the process), and it's an easy choice.
Using PDF's for major portions of websites is stupid, but they do have their place. It's all a matter of using the right tool for the job (or at least the least bad tool).
My first experience going online was also with Prodigy, which my parents promptly cancelled after they got the telephone bill with all the long distance charges. It wasn't till 97 when I turned 18 and moved out of the sticks that I was able to get on again, with a 56k dialup modem.
I used reCAPTCHA on a small phpBB board. Because of the small number of users, I activate any accounts manually, However, since the first of the year I must have gotten 40 attempted registrations. Very annoying, because I got an e-mail for each of them. Switched to a question that only someone familiar with my board would be familiar with, seems to have stopped that stuff.
I got the warning about being accessed from China. Unfortunately, it came 2 days after I became aware of my gmail account and World of Warcraft account both being compromised. By that time I had already changed the password, and had Blizzard restore my stuff.
This probably won't happen everywhere. I live in a rural community, and there's really no other options besides satellite or (in town) cable. Many people don't even have high speed internet - DSL became available just 2 of years ago, and our town still has a local dial-up ISP with enough subscribers to turn a profit. The nearest over-the-air TV station is over 60 miles away, so it takes a powerful antenna to get even a single station.
I personally could probably do without a lot of the channels on my Dish Network system. However, I like HIstory, History Inernational, Investigation Discovery, and Tru TV enough to keep it around. And my parents don't know how to use the internet, so they have to have something to watch.
For most things I use the DVR of my Dish Network receiver, however for broadcast TV I usually use a VCR (it's a combination VCR/DVD recorder, but I have tons of old tapes laying around). Mom has to have her Oprah and Dr. Phil.
Agreed. If I could no longer use the complex extensions I have grown attached to (NoScript and DownThemAll among them) I would use something other than Firefox. Extensions are about the only thing that Firefox has that keeps me from switching to another browser.
Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft implies that the person the item is stolen from no longer has the item. But that's beside the point.
I seldom download movies or tv shows from the internet. I have Netflix and that does ok for most movies I'd care to watch. I often buy CD's as well. However, sometimes I want to download things that I can't get elsewhere. Like missed episodes of TV shows, for instance. (I often buy boxed sets, but sometimes I just want the latest one when I miss it)
While I agree, there's always going to be a number of people who will pirate everything under the sun, there's also people who simply aren't being served effectively who turn to piracy out of desperation, because "legal" alternatives either aren't available or cost far too much. For example, I don't buy MP3's because they're too expensive, it's just as cheap (and often cheaper!) to buy an actual CD.
There's more than one side here. Yes, Microsoft or any other company should fire the foreign workers first when possible. But realistically, it doesn't always work that way.
Say Microsoft has one team working on some craptacular product, say Microsoft Songsmith, that isn't as complex or demanding as another product, say Windows 7. Say they decide to lay off some workers. The Songsmith guys are the obvious choice, as the product royally blows to start with, but wait, we need to fire the foreign workers first. However some of the Songsmith guys aren't foreign workers. Do you take some foreign workers, who are actively involved in the production of Windows 7, and replace them with some of the American geniuses behind Microsoft Songsmith? Or do you just can everyone responsible for that crapfest?
Remember, the companies in question are large. They have many departments and projects, and the skills that make one perfect for one project may not be adequate for another. Thus, they're likely to wipe out all those working on a product, rather than simply removing the foreign workers.
Granted, in the current economic climate, Microsoft should NOT be hiring new foreign workers. However shuffling workers between projects would in order to fire the foreign workers first would be devastating to productivity to say the least.
It may not be that bad, but it still can be somewhat annoying. My whole point is that, having used both Linux and Windows, my experience on both is mixed (though with Vista it's more "pissed beyond belief that I wasted my time on that pile of shit" than mixed). There's really no mythical OS that does everything perfect and right. Unless you believe the Mac fanboys.
If you think these were bad, you obviously have never been to a bar on karaoke night. Now, imagine that, and this, combined into one horrid monstrosity. Yeah. It gets worse. Much worse.
A quick search on OSAlt.com turns up kivio, Dia, OOo Draw, and ArgoUML. While they probably don't have the feature set of Visio, there are alternatives.
There are a few reasons I don't use Linux on my main box right now, and this hits the biggest of them.
Anyone who has ever tried to install a program not in the repository will know what a pain it can be. Getting stuck in dependency hell is still a very real problem, and while repositories help they are no substitute to fixing the problem.
In Windows, if you get an installer you have a reasonable expectation of being able to run it. Sometimes you hit dependencies, but not often, and they're generally the same for most programs.
Another big thing is having different package managers. What to do when a developer distributes a.rpm but not a.deb, or the other way around?
And I won't even start bitching about the 3D Graphics support...
Still, Windows isn't perfect, and Linux is far better in many ways. Having a software repository is awesome, and saves a lot of time searching for programs. However, until these problems are addressed, many developers will continue to develop only for Windows.
(I do use Linux on a regular basis, and find it does an awesome job for many things. Just not everything)
From my reading, it's not a matter of having no options that can handle it, but a matter of having them all in one single easy to use client with a large feature set.
Unfortunately, SecureCRT is proprietary. So no go on a Linux version, and just a quick search doesn't turn up much in the way of alternatives. One thing it DID turn up was SecPanel, which is a GUI for SSH and SCP. I doubt it has quite the feature set, and I haven't tried it, but it might be worth looking into.
My Windows box only takes 15 minutes, with all the crap that runs at startup! Still, a PC with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 may boot faster than most.
Tell that to the morons that design the things. Every time the electricity flickers, I have to reset 5 or so clocks at my parents' house, otherwise they'd be flashing 12:00 forever.
On the other hand, if you ever have to make house calls to check on a PC, appliances flashing 12:00 DO help in diagnosing the cause.
They're starting to build hard drives into TV's, so you can download shows from the internet. For situations like this, it is quite understandable.
Though the remote comment is about right. And don't forget the fact that some TV's still store things (like channel list) in volatile memory (with no battery backup!) that has to be maintained by constant current. It's stupid in this day and age, but they do.
On a related note, there's got to be a way to back up date/time on appliances, or power a clock with a battery, so they don't f***ing flash 12:00 in my parents' house.
Windows 7 still has problems. Several of them in fact. Having used it, I have been frustrated by multiple issues with the installer, requiring multiple rollbacks, and just in general ticking me off. I hope this gets ironed out, because having to roll back way earlier, or hoping and praying that installing something doesn't mess up the installer... just isn't going to work for me in an OS I actually use on a regular basis.
It's a 19" Dell D1226H CRT. It's SUPPOSED to be able to handle 1600x1200 at 75Hz, but it doesn't handle it well. The screen darkens, and moves up and to the left, such that it's almost unusable.
It's pretty old, I've had the thing for years. I'm only still using it because it's a spare computer, and I gave the LCD I used with it to my mom for her computer.
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Where I live (Northeast Arkansas) AT&T coverage is pretty spotty. Verizon is much better, though there's a big dead zone right on the AR/MO border. Once you cross into Southeast Missouri, Verizon coverage starts getting spotty. I'm with Verizon because my AT&T phone wouldn't ring when I was at home. Took the phone back within 2 days and got out of contract. AT&T still tried to bill me $640 early termination fee, though, took over an hour on the phone to sort THAT out.
This. Don't expect your family to know how to get into your digital copy, and don't expect it to last as long as good, old-fashioned paper. A safety deposit box is great for long-term documents, and a small fire-proof safe at home is good enough for keeping frequently-changed things like passwords. Note that you should not keep REALLY important documents in a home safe, especially a small one, as a thief can simply pick it up, walk out, and drill the lock at his convenience.
Of course my notebook doubles as entertainment when I travel, and I usually have a handful of DVD's or Blu-rays to watch. If I didn't have an optical drive, I'd have to convert my collection on my desktop and transfer to my notebook, a time consuming proposition considering how large my collection is and how lazy I am.
PDFs are great when you want to save a document for later, offline use. Like a product manual, which one may refer to once in a while. You can refer to your local copy, and not have to download it every time.
PDF's are also great for preserving the formatting on documents. It takes a lot of effort to get the formatting to appear exactly the way you want it to in HTML in every browser. Now imagine you have 5,000 separate product manuals, which one can either simply and easily export to PDF, or have the headache of converting to HTML (and losing portions of the formatting in the process), and it's an easy choice.
Using PDF's for major portions of websites is stupid, but they do have their place. It's all a matter of using the right tool for the job (or at least the least bad tool).
My first experience going online was also with Prodigy, which my parents promptly cancelled after they got the telephone bill with all the long distance charges. It wasn't till 97 when I turned 18 and moved out of the sticks that I was able to get on again, with a 56k dialup modem.
I used reCAPTCHA on a small phpBB board. Because of the small number of users, I activate any accounts manually, However, since the first of the year I must have gotten 40 attempted registrations. Very annoying, because I got an e-mail for each of them. Switched to a question that only someone familiar with my board would be familiar with, seems to have stopped that stuff.
I got the warning about being accessed from China. Unfortunately, it came 2 days after I became aware of my gmail account and World of Warcraft account both being compromised. By that time I had already changed the password, and had Blizzard restore my stuff.
This probably won't happen everywhere. I live in a rural community, and there's really no other options besides satellite or (in town) cable. Many people don't even have high speed internet - DSL became available just 2 of years ago, and our town still has a local dial-up ISP with enough subscribers to turn a profit. The nearest over-the-air TV station is over 60 miles away, so it takes a powerful antenna to get even a single station.
I personally could probably do without a lot of the channels on my Dish Network system. However, I like HIstory, History Inernational, Investigation Discovery, and Tru TV enough to keep it around. And my parents don't know how to use the internet, so they have to have something to watch.
For most things I use the DVR of my Dish Network receiver, however for broadcast TV I usually use a VCR (it's a combination VCR/DVD recorder, but I have tons of old tapes laying around). Mom has to have her Oprah and Dr. Phil.
Agreed. If I could no longer use the complex extensions I have grown attached to (NoScript and DownThemAll among them) I would use something other than Firefox. Extensions are about the only thing that Firefox has that keeps me from switching to another browser.
Is that there isn't anything as awesome as the old MP3.com.
Seriously.
I probably haven't been exposed to one independent song in the past year. When mp3.com was still here, I downloaded a ton, in a variety of genres.
Does anyone know of a (good) site like the old mp3.com that offers the same scope of music AND free downloads?
Someone hack his PC and install the damned purple ape!
Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft implies that the person the item is stolen from no longer has the item. But that's beside the point.
I seldom download movies or tv shows from the internet. I have Netflix and that does ok for most movies I'd care to watch. I often buy CD's as well. However, sometimes I want to download things that I can't get elsewhere. Like missed episodes of TV shows, for instance. (I often buy boxed sets, but sometimes I just want the latest one when I miss it)
While I agree, there's always going to be a number of people who will pirate everything under the sun, there's also people who simply aren't being served effectively who turn to piracy out of desperation, because "legal" alternatives either aren't available or cost far too much. For example, I don't buy MP3's because they're too expensive, it's just as cheap (and often cheaper!) to buy an actual CD.
There's more than one side here. Yes, Microsoft or any other company should fire the foreign workers first when possible. But realistically, it doesn't always work that way.
Say Microsoft has one team working on some craptacular product, say Microsoft Songsmith, that isn't as complex or demanding as another product, say Windows 7. Say they decide to lay off some workers. The Songsmith guys are the obvious choice, as the product royally blows to start with, but wait, we need to fire the foreign workers first. However some of the Songsmith guys aren't foreign workers. Do you take some foreign workers, who are actively involved in the production of Windows 7, and replace them with some of the American geniuses behind Microsoft Songsmith? Or do you just can everyone responsible for that crapfest?
Remember, the companies in question are large. They have many departments and projects, and the skills that make one perfect for one project may not be adequate for another. Thus, they're likely to wipe out all those working on a product, rather than simply removing the foreign workers.
Granted, in the current economic climate, Microsoft should NOT be hiring new foreign workers. However shuffling workers between projects would in order to fire the foreign workers first would be devastating to productivity to say the least.
It may not be that bad, but it still can be somewhat annoying. My whole point is that, having used both Linux and Windows, my experience on both is mixed (though with Vista it's more "pissed beyond belief that I wasted my time on that pile of shit" than mixed). There's really no mythical OS that does everything perfect and right. Unless you believe the Mac fanboys.
I actually like Metallica's music.
Of course the band is full of douches, so my Metallica mp3's are all pirated.
If you think these were bad, you obviously have never been to a bar on karaoke night. Now, imagine that, and this, combined into one horrid monstrosity. Yeah. It gets worse. Much worse.
A quick search on OSAlt.com turns up kivio, Dia, OOo Draw, and ArgoUML. While they probably don't have the feature set of Visio, there are alternatives.
There are a few reasons I don't use Linux on my main box right now, and this hits the biggest of them.
Anyone who has ever tried to install a program not in the repository will know what a pain it can be. Getting stuck in dependency hell is still a very real problem, and while repositories help they are no substitute to fixing the problem.
In Windows, if you get an installer you have a reasonable expectation of being able to run it. Sometimes you hit dependencies, but not often, and they're generally the same for most programs.
Another big thing is having different package managers. What to do when a developer distributes a .rpm but not a .deb, or the other way around?
And I won't even start bitching about the 3D Graphics support...
Still, Windows isn't perfect, and Linux is far better in many ways. Having a software repository is awesome, and saves a lot of time searching for programs. However, until these problems are addressed, many developers will continue to develop only for Windows.
(I do use Linux on a regular basis, and find it does an awesome job for many things. Just not everything)
From my reading, it's not a matter of having no options that can handle it, but a matter of having them all in one single easy to use client with a large feature set.
Unfortunately, SecureCRT is proprietary. So no go on a Linux version, and just a quick search doesn't turn up much in the way of alternatives. One thing it DID turn up was SecPanel, which is a GUI for SSH and SCP. I doubt it has quite the feature set, and I haven't tried it, but it might be worth looking into.
My Windows box only takes 15 minutes, with all the crap that runs at startup! Still, a PC with an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 may boot faster than most.
Tell that to the morons that design the things. Every time the electricity flickers, I have to reset 5 or so clocks at my parents' house, otherwise they'd be flashing 12:00 forever.
On the other hand, if you ever have to make house calls to check on a PC, appliances flashing 12:00 DO help in diagnosing the cause.
They're starting to build hard drives into TV's, so you can download shows from the internet. For situations like this, it is quite understandable.
Though the remote comment is about right. And don't forget the fact that some TV's still store things (like channel list) in volatile memory (with no battery backup!) that has to be maintained by constant current. It's stupid in this day and age, but they do.
On a related note, there's got to be a way to back up date/time on appliances, or power a clock with a battery, so they don't f***ing flash 12:00 in my parents' house.
Windows 7 still has problems. Several of them in fact. Having used it, I have been frustrated by multiple issues with the installer, requiring multiple rollbacks, and just in general ticking me off. I hope this gets ironed out, because having to roll back way earlier, or hoping and praying that installing something doesn't mess up the installer... just isn't going to work for me in an OS I actually use on a regular basis.
It's a 19" Dell D1226H CRT. It's SUPPOSED to be able to handle 1600x1200 at 75Hz, but it doesn't handle it well. The screen darkens, and moves up and to the left, such that it's almost unusable.
It's pretty old, I've had the thing for years. I'm only still using it because it's a spare computer, and I gave the LCD I used with it to my mom for her computer.