They are Intel hardware, right? You don't state what kind of server you *do* want/need, but I would think you could install any Linux/BSD on it. The lack of a built-in optical drive would make it difficult to boot, but it's got five USB ports, so maybe you could boot from an external CD or thumb drive?
If it won't boot from a USB port, you could try putting the drive(s) in an external enclosure so you could build the OS from another machine. I used that trick to do a Knoppix hard drive install on my laptop when I couldn't get it to boot from the on-board CD drive. It was a bit of a PITA, but it worked:)
You are thinking in terms of a data center, not a small office with a half-dozen employees needing to share files occasionally.
If you are building a data center with hundreds of PCs, then absolutely make them as easy to maintain as possible. A minuscule failure rate X 1,000 servers = pretty good chance you will periodically have to swap drives out. Now factor in an almost guaranteed requirement for five-9's reliability, and RAID + hot swappable drives is a must.
However, if you are building a single file server for a small office, where budgets are tight, the risk of a drive failure in any given year is almost nil and you can yell out of your open office door to let everyone know when you are about to take the server down in the unlikely case that a drive *does* crap out on you in the middle of the work day, then maybe something like a Mac Mini isn't really that foolish. BTDT, albeit on an original Pentium desktop rather than a Mac Mini. Come to think of it, I remember pulling the CMOS battery on that "server" once, but I don't ever remember having to swap the hard drive.
What would you like to bet that most (granted, not necessarily all, but most) of AT&T's employees are also AT&T customers? Therefore, what would you like to bet that most (etc.) of AT&T's employees' personal e-mail addresses end in @att.net?
...or your ISP has shut down your Internet connection because of the spam complaints they received about your open relay. BTDT (from the ISP side, not the user side).
No doubt. I cringe every time I see a small business (often a church) with less than a half-dozen employees running Exchange Server, Active Directory, etc. Seriously, in an organization that small, do you really need Exchange, AD, etc., or could you get by with GMail and file shares on local PCs? If you really want a dedicated server, set up a Samba server. It's not that hard, and if you look, you can find a Linux guy who would be glad to build it for you for less than the cost of Exchange. You'll only have to call him once a year (if that often), so you won't have the overhead of keeping an MCSE on staff to support your handful of PCs. And if you do have to call him, assuming he is even remotely worth his pay, he can troubleshoot the Samba server from home (or his office).
Being young and mildly tech-conscious, they overestimated their ability to manage this thing...
C'mon, who here on/. hasn't been there? If you haven't yet found yourself in such a position, you will eventually.
...but managing backups was way out of their league. The backups weren't even running, though they remained blissfully unaware of this fact...
This reminded me of my own worst IT disaster, back when I was young, green and waaaaaay over-confident. I learned from my mistake; who's to say that your clients didn't learn also? They at least had the common sense to recognize that they didn't know enough and therefore called you, right?
It seems to me that you are making an error that is all too common: ignorance != stupidity. There is no shame in simply being unaware of something -- everyone has something yet to learn. The truly stupid, however...well, they have a way of weeding themselves out of the gene pool.
As for the "borderline masochistic relationship between [Apple users] and Apple" -- I don't know about that. I've only used a Mac occasionally, but it seems like a far less masochistic relationship than that which exists between Windows users and Microsoft, or even arguably less masochistic than the relationship between Linux users and <insert name of favorite distro here> (and I say that as one who regularly uses Gentoo, so I'm neck-deep in masochism <grin>).
This was in Alaska, not California, but the regulations were essentially the same and AFAIK, DMV was following the regs correctly. My point -- which I believe you are saying you agree with -- was that the regs are stupid:)
If the car can pass an emissions test (not the visual inspection before they start the emissions test), then what difference does it make what type of filter is installed? The regs as written make even less sense in a case like yours where an illegal modification makes the vehicle run even cleaner than the factory installation. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone at DMV who would even attempt to answer that question.
I disagree. First, some people aren't "stupid idiots" -- they legitimately have a need for a bigger vehicle that can do things that a Prius (for example) can't. Second, if you don't allow people to do dumb things, they never get a chance to learn why those things are dumb.
There may be people who have a need for a vehicle that doesn't get as good mileage as other vehicles. I traded in a car with a four cylinder, 2.0L engine for a truck with a six cylinder, 4.0L engine because I sometimes need to haul things that wouldn't fit in my car (my half-stack and my wife's drum kit, for example). My gas mileage dropped, but the truck still makes sense for me because I still need to haul things rather frequently. However, I also bought a motorcycle this summer for commuting so that I can have economical transportation when I don't need to haul things.
Some people are indeed too thick to act responsibly, but I think you give people (as a group) less credit than they deserve. Furthermore, when you don't allow people to do dumb things and learn from their mistakes, you end up with people who never learn not to do dumb things. Your example of car manufacturers who "design a car and market it hard, and try to sell as many as possible" is a great example of that. GM did exactly that: they created a line of vehicles geared for "stupid people", and when fuel prices and a tough economic climate all but killed the market for Hummers and Avalanches and such, GM started to implode. However, our government "regulated" by propping up a company that by all rights should have failed. In this case, far from "taking away the option to make cars suitable for the dumb", government regulation resuscitated a business that was doing exactly that.
In other words, recent history suggests that "regulating" may be less effective at rewarding the wise and punishing the terminally stupid than a free market.
I've thought the same thing myself, and not just about CARB, but about any state emissions board.
I bought an Eagle Talon TSi a few years ago that had an aftermarket air filter in it. The local DMV wouldn't even test the emissions on the car because it wasn't an "approved" air filter. OEM or equivalent filters were okay, as was a K&N air filter. However, any K&N knock-off filter was an "unapproved modification" to the car, and was an automatic fail. It made no sense to me that a well-maintained car with an aftermarket filter should fail -- even if the emissions were well within spec -- when I knew of people who had cars that passed the visual inspection, but could only pass the emissions test if they added Heet to the tank before the test.
When police were contacted they said "Sorry, can't do anything, the threats are online". Nothing happened.
I bet that they probably would be singing an entirely different song if the threats were against a prominent political figure -- say the president -- rather than Joe Schmoe.
Anyway...Having married a former police dispatcher, I can tell you that the response you get from the police department can vary greatly depending upon whom you talk to. Some dispatchers won't even forward the call to an officer if they don't think it's important; another dispatcher might. Some officers might give you the brush-off; others might at least talk with the other party. In any case, I would think -- not being employed in the legal industry -- that the proper way to handle someone making stupid threats on a web forum would be to contact a judge to get a Cease & Desist letter.
Flu inoculation advertisements are a warning and an offer to help. "Hey, there is a deadly threat that you should be aware of. I have a product that can help minimize that threat." In Toyota's "marketing campaign", they were directly threatening this woman -- even if they really had no intention of causing any actual harm. A more appropriate analogy would be, "Hey, I've got a product that will make you immune to H1N1. If you don't buy it from me, I'll deliberately infect you with the virus."
That depends. I am currently getting a steady stream of 'updates' about a particular organism that is also supposedly out there trying to get me. The authors of this communication are undoubtedly attempting to use fear to get the desired response out of me.
However, updates about the H1N1 virus are not direct threats against your person. In fact, updates about the H1N1 virus could easily be interpreted as a protection mechanism to keep you safe from the H1N1 virus. At the very least, you could argue that the updates are from an entity that has absolutely no relationship -- other than reporting status -- with the entity that is "out to get [you]" The same cannot be said of Toyota and this woman.
Stalking or Flu awareness? Depends on the intent, I'd say, not the fear.
Yeah, pretty much.
If I'm wrong, then we'd better put a stop to this whole 'Terror Level Brown' thing, too. Because that's all about inducing behavior through fear as well.
I've got to agree with you there. I'd say there is also a component of signal-to-noise as well -- if we are always living in a state of fear, then how will we know the difference when there really is something to fear? But that's a different argument for a different thread. </offtopic>
Since Toyota clearly never intended for someone to actually come within a reasonable distance of anyone, the 'stalking' was as fake as the person.
I think you'd have a hard time getting that argument to fly with a judge. Warning: something remarkably similar -- but yet entirely removed from, since IANAL -- to legal opinion ahead. If that argument were to have legal standing, then every stalker in the country could get off the hook by simply arguing that they never actually intended to harm anyone...they were merely pulling a prank for laughs.
This puts us down to basic harassment, and lets face it, advertisers have gotten away with that crime for far too long to do much about it now.
There is a world of difference between minor annoyances -- and let's face it, the occasional phone call during dinner, or even 800 spam messages in your inbox, are worlds apart from threatening phone calls -- real, or not -- at all hours of the day. Creating an environment in which a reasonable person would be in fear for their safety is a far, far cry from the "basic harassment" that we expect from advertisers.
Wish you had built the installer for my wife's laptops:)
I added OOo and firefox to her machines, I don't care if Java is on them and Nero isn't bad, so the extras you install would be fine (don't know what VLC is, and I'm too lazy to google it right now;) However, the Norton's updater that came on my wife's machine is annoying, and the HP updater application on it is by far the most evil, vile, insidious "legit" program I have ever seen on a PC. Most malware authors could learn a thing or two from it. It pops up on her computer on every reboot now, can't be closed unless you subscribe to the updates, and can't be found in the task menu. It's all but taking her laptop hostage. I suppose the PS tools might find and kill it, but I haven't taken the time to do that yet. Seriously, other than the fact that it can be moved so that only a sliver of the window is showing on-screen, the HP-updater is every bit as bad as any malware app.
UAC allows you to run as a unprivileged user and escalate, in much the same way as SUDO, to administrator when needed.
UAC and the user privileges in Windows in general and Vista in particular is fundamentally flawed. Saying UAC is similar to sudo is like saying a Mercury Sable is like a Ferrari Testarossa because both are automobiles. There may be some similarities, but one is far more enjoyable to use than the other.
In fact even if you run as administrator you are actually running as an unprivileged user...
But that is part of the problem! On my *Nix boxes, if I log in as root, I can do anything on my system. Consequently, I rarely run as root, and when I do, I put on my paranoid hat so I don't screw things up. When I log in with my normal user account, I don't have administrative privileges unless I preface my command with "sudo". Furthermore, unless I type "sudo" before the command I want to run, it doesn't run with admin privileges when I not logged in as root, period. This is a sane compromise between usability and security. Use root only when necessary (rare) and use a non-privileged account the rest of the time. The distinction between the root user and non-privileged accounts is clear and distinct at all times.
On the other hand, Vista's excruciatingly poor permissions design ended up blurring the lines between superuser (root/Administrator), power user (non-privileged with sudo access) and non-privileged user even worse than before. Even as Administrator, you still aren't an administrator in Vista, unless you use the "run as" option (wt*?!?!?! Am I admin or not?) And non-privileged users can still infect Vista with a virus thanks to UAC elevating everyone on the whole freaking system to superuser status. As anyone who has ever clicked "Ok" through force of habit when an "Are you sure" alert window popped up can tell you, clicking through a prompt is a poor substitute for retyping your credentials to escalate privileges. Furthermore, as a sys admin, I like being able to lock down user accounts with a sudoers file so that not everyone can escalate privileges. Perhaps Vista has something similar, but I haven't found it yet (in all fairness, I also haven't looked very hard, so this might just be a reflection of my experience with *Nix and lack thereof with Vista).
If Vista and UAC work for you, then more power to you. But FWIW, my opinion is that UAC is a poor substitute for sudo.
Arghh...parent post's score is currently "1, Troll" despite being insightful and even phrased politely ("please learn the difference...", emphasis mine).
Rather ironic, and proof that the mods are in a rather malevolent mood today [:rolleyes:]
Another thing to consider: Your friends' preinstalled copy of Vista is going to be garbage because of all the broken sometimes unremovable shovelware. Ditto for the restore image on the recovery partition or the CDs, and doubly so if it's a laptop. All the computers I see (laptops especially) are practically unusable, even fresh after a recovery partition. Install from a regular boxed-copy Vista disc, type in the OEM key (you'll have to back up your activation or give Microsoft's automated line a call) and the same laptop will fly.
In fairness, I don't suppose that can really be blamed on Microsoft since all the crapware on an OEM installation is installed by, well, the OEM installer:) However, having said that, I really can't say that purchasing a PC (desktop or laptop) and then shelling out another $150-200 for the O/S (full version, not upgrade) is a good answer to the problem -- nor is pirating a copy because I already "own" Vista. Screw that; I can legally get Ubuntu (or Gentoo or Slackware or CentOS....) for free.
I dont think Vista was that bad OS after a little bit more powerful hardware came out and after you got used to it.
To each their own, and if Vista works for you, then that's great. Ultimately, a computer is a tool, and I promise not to get offended if a different tool works better for you than the one I use:)
However, my experience with Vista has been somewhat different. My wife has bought two Vista laptops in the last year, despite my suggestions to buy something -- anything -- else. Quite frankly, if Vista had worked for her, I'd have said the same thing to her that I said to you...but it doesn't (thus the second laptop), and since I am a sys admin by day, she comes to me with her computer problems. Here are a couple of examples:
*) Network printers: she still has a desktop running 2K that has an HP-882C printer attached to it. The printer is shared, and every other machine we own (including my Linux desktop, laptop and server) can print to this printer. The Vista laptop can print to the printer, too...until she reboots. Then I have to manually add the printer again. I have tried adding the printer with the GUI, adding the printer with the "net use" command from the CLI, etc., etc., but every time she reboots, the printer is gone and I have to add it back. I finally set up a Dell network printer, which for some reason known only to the Vista kernel, manages to persist through reboots.
*) Security: Both of her laptops were Compaqs (like Vista, also against my recommendation, but I digress), and were bought new. After her first Compaq was compromised by a virus (despite having A/V on the machine and yes, I patch and update O/S and A/V regularly), I reinstalled from the source CDs that came with her laptop and reinstalled A/V. Shortly afterwards, it was again infected. My wife lets our 8-year old play with the laptop when the two of them are at my wife's business after school and -- again, against my recommendations -- our daughter is usually logged in on my wife's admin account. Microsoft's security and NOD32 A/V is no match for a third grade girl's surfing habits (on-line games, mostly) -- thus the second laptop which our daughter is not allowed to touch, sigh.
*) Run as Administrator and UAC: despite what you said about UAC (
What comes to UAC, it's the correct direction, but lots of Windows userbase is general audience which would get annoyed with such in Linux and other OS too.
), well...they are a step in the right direction, but IMHO, they were poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly implemented. The first time I tried to do an ipconfig/release and ipconfig/renew on my wife's Vista and found out that 1) you must have admin privileges to run those commands and 2) once you opened a CLI, you couldn't then call for Admin privileges a la "sudo" but instead had to go back to the start menu and run the "cmd" command as Administrator, yes, I was pretty annoyed. Having used sudo on *Nix systems for nearly a decade, I could not understand what genius in Redmond thought that launching an entire *command shell* as Admin was a better idea. Sudo times out after 5 minutes; the CLI is Admin until you close it. And you can run sudo at any time -- you don't have to open a new shell with sudo to get admin privileges. Yech. As for UAC, did you ever click "Ok" by force of habit instead of "Cancel" when you accidentally tried to delete a file? Do you really think UAC will be any better? Those "general audience" users you mentioned will soon be merrily clicking through UAC alert windows installing God-only-knows-what (if they aren't already). The only saving grace to UAC, IMHO, is that at least you might not be expecting a confirmation window to pop up if something tries to covertly install malware. Perhaps a savvy user will at least have a chance to think about wh
If there is a loophole in a law that allows my hypothetical company to dump toxic waste into the municipal water supply -- but it saves my company money -- then I would ABSOLUTELY be to blame for taking a legal action that was clearly harmful to my community. Whether or not the law is broken, I have a moral imperative to act ethically. Certainly there are grey areas, where what you do might not be particularly nice, but isn't actively harmful (for example, your average political ad) but when you begin abusing the law for profit, you've stepped out of the grey and into the black.
Slashdot Mirror
They are Intel hardware, right? You don't state what kind of server you *do* want/need, but I would think you could install any Linux/BSD on it. The lack of a built-in optical drive would make it difficult to boot, but it's got five USB ports, so maybe you could boot from an external CD or thumb drive?
:)
If it won't boot from a USB port, you could try putting the drive(s) in an external enclosure so you could build the OS from another machine. I used that trick to do a Knoppix hard drive install on my laptop when I couldn't get it to boot from the on-board CD drive. It was a bit of a PITA, but it worked
You are thinking in terms of a data center, not a small office with a half-dozen employees needing to share files occasionally.
If you are building a data center with hundreds of PCs, then absolutely make them as easy to maintain as possible. A minuscule failure rate X 1,000 servers = pretty good chance you will periodically have to swap drives out. Now factor in an almost guaranteed requirement for five-9's reliability, and RAID + hot swappable drives is a must.
However, if you are building a single file server for a small office, where budgets are tight, the risk of a drive failure in any given year is almost nil and you can yell out of your open office door to let everyone know when you are about to take the server down in the unlikely case that a drive *does* crap out on you in the middle of the work day, then maybe something like a Mac Mini isn't really that foolish. BTDT, albeit on an original Pentium desktop rather than a Mac Mini. Come to think of it, I remember pulling the CMOS battery on that "server" once, but I don't ever remember having to swap the hard drive.
What would you like to bet that most (granted, not necessarily all, but most) of AT&T's employees are also AT&T customers? Therefore, what would you like to bet that most (etc.) of AT&T's employees' personal e-mail addresses end in @att.net?
...or your ISP has shut down your Internet connection because of the spam complaints they received about your open relay. BTDT (from the ISP side, not the user side).
No doubt. I cringe every time I see a small business (often a church) with less than a half-dozen employees running Exchange Server, Active Directory, etc. Seriously, in an organization that small, do you really need Exchange, AD, etc., or could you get by with GMail and file shares on local PCs? If you really want a dedicated server, set up a Samba server. It's not that hard, and if you look, you can find a Linux guy who would be glad to build it for you for less than the cost of Exchange. You'll only have to call him once a year (if that often), so you won't have the overhead of keeping an MCSE on staff to support your handful of PCs. And if you do have to call him, assuming he is even remotely worth his pay, he can troubleshoot the Samba server from home (or his office).
Being young and mildly tech-conscious, they overestimated their ability to manage this thing...
C'mon, who here on /. hasn't been there? If you haven't yet found yourself in such a position, you will eventually.
...but managing backups was way out of their league. The backups weren't even running, though they remained blissfully unaware of this fact...
This reminded me of my own worst IT disaster, back when I was young, green and waaaaaay over-confident. I learned from my mistake; who's to say that your clients didn't learn also? They at least had the common sense to recognize that they didn't know enough and therefore called you, right?
It seems to me that you are making an error that is all too common: ignorance != stupidity. There is no shame in simply being unaware of something -- everyone has something yet to learn. The truly stupid, however...well, they have a way of weeding themselves out of the gene pool.
As for the "borderline masochistic relationship between [Apple users] and Apple" -- I don't know about that. I've only used a Mac occasionally, but it seems like a far less masochistic relationship than that which exists between Windows users and Microsoft, or even arguably less masochistic than the relationship between Linux users and <insert name of favorite distro here> (and I say that as one who regularly uses Gentoo, so I'm neck-deep in masochism <grin>).
This was in Alaska, not California, but the regulations were essentially the same and AFAIK, DMV was following the regs correctly. My point -- which I believe you are saying you agree with -- was that the regs are stupid :)
If the car can pass an emissions test (not the visual inspection before they start the emissions test), then what difference does it make what type of filter is installed? The regs as written make even less sense in a case like yours where an illegal modification makes the vehicle run even cleaner than the factory installation. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone at DMV who would even attempt to answer that question.
I disagree. First, some people aren't "stupid idiots" -- they legitimately have a need for a bigger vehicle that can do things that a Prius (for example) can't. Second, if you don't allow people to do dumb things, they never get a chance to learn why those things are dumb.
There may be people who have a need for a vehicle that doesn't get as good mileage as other vehicles. I traded in a car with a four cylinder, 2.0L engine for a truck with a six cylinder, 4.0L engine because I sometimes need to haul things that wouldn't fit in my car (my half-stack and my wife's drum kit, for example). My gas mileage dropped, but the truck still makes sense for me because I still need to haul things rather frequently. However, I also bought a motorcycle this summer for commuting so that I can have economical transportation when I don't need to haul things.
Some people are indeed too thick to act responsibly, but I think you give people (as a group) less credit than they deserve. Furthermore, when you don't allow people to do dumb things and learn from their mistakes, you end up with people who never learn not to do dumb things. Your example of car manufacturers who "design a car and market it hard, and try to sell as many as possible" is a great example of that. GM did exactly that: they created a line of vehicles geared for "stupid people", and when fuel prices and a tough economic climate all but killed the market for Hummers and Avalanches and such, GM started to implode. However, our government "regulated" by propping up a company that by all rights should have failed. In this case, far from "taking away the option to make cars suitable for the dumb", government regulation resuscitated a business that was doing exactly that.
In other words, recent history suggests that "regulating" may be less effective at rewarding the wise and punishing the terminally stupid than a free market.
I've thought the same thing myself, and not just about CARB, but about any state emissions board.
I bought an Eagle Talon TSi a few years ago that had an aftermarket air filter in it. The local DMV wouldn't even test the emissions on the car because it wasn't an "approved" air filter. OEM or equivalent filters were okay, as was a K&N air filter. However, any K&N knock-off filter was an "unapproved modification" to the car, and was an automatic fail. It made no sense to me that a well-maintained car with an aftermarket filter should fail -- even if the emissions were well within spec -- when I knew of people who had cars that passed the visual inspection, but could only pass the emissions test if they added Heet to the tank before the test.
Just ride naked.
Erm...a naked motorcycle, that is.
I ride a motorcycle ;)
(and I don't live in CA)
When police were contacted they said "Sorry, can't do anything, the threats are online". Nothing happened.
I bet that they probably would be singing an entirely different song if the threats were against a prominent political figure -- say the president -- rather than Joe Schmoe.
Anyway...Having married a former police dispatcher, I can tell you that the response you get from the police department can vary greatly depending upon whom you talk to. Some dispatchers won't even forward the call to an officer if they don't think it's important; another dispatcher might. Some officers might give you the brush-off; others might at least talk with the other party. In any case, I would think -- not being employed in the legal industry -- that the proper way to handle someone making stupid threats on a web forum would be to contact a judge to get a Cease & Desist letter.
Or what component of it makes it that way?
Flu inoculation advertisements are a warning and an offer to help. "Hey, there is a deadly threat that you should be aware of. I have a product that can help minimize that threat." In Toyota's "marketing campaign", they were directly threatening this woman -- even if they really had no intention of causing any actual harm. A more appropriate analogy would be, "Hey, I've got a product that will make you immune to H1N1. If you don't buy it from me, I'll deliberately infect you with the virus."
Got it now?
That depends. I am currently getting a steady stream of 'updates' about a particular organism that is also supposedly out there trying to get me. The authors of this communication are undoubtedly attempting to use fear to get the desired response out of me.
However, updates about the H1N1 virus are not direct threats against your person. In fact, updates about the H1N1 virus could easily be interpreted as a protection mechanism to keep you safe from the H1N1 virus. At the very least, you could argue that the updates are from an entity that has absolutely no relationship -- other than reporting status -- with the entity that is "out to get [you]" The same cannot be said of Toyota and this woman.
Stalking or Flu awareness? Depends on the intent, I'd say, not the fear.
Yeah, pretty much.
If I'm wrong, then we'd better put a stop to this whole 'Terror Level Brown' thing, too. Because that's all about inducing behavior through fear as well.
I've got to agree with you there. I'd say there is also a component of signal-to-noise as well -- if we are always living in a state of fear, then how will we know the difference when there really is something to fear? But that's a different argument for a different thread. </offtopic>
Since Toyota clearly never intended for someone to actually come within a reasonable distance of anyone, the 'stalking' was as fake as the person.
I think you'd have a hard time getting that argument to fly with a judge. Warning: something remarkably similar -- but yet entirely removed from, since IANAL -- to legal opinion ahead. If that argument were to have legal standing, then every stalker in the country could get off the hook by simply arguing that they never actually intended to harm anyone...they were merely pulling a prank for laughs.
This puts us down to basic harassment, and lets face it, advertisers have gotten away with that crime for far too long to do much about it now.
There is a world of difference between minor annoyances -- and let's face it, the occasional phone call during dinner, or even 800 spam messages in your inbox, are worlds apart from threatening phone calls -- real, or not -- at all hours of the day. Creating an environment in which a reasonable person would be in fear for their safety is a far, far cry from the "basic harassment" that we expect from advertisers.
Close, but I was thinking $APP detects additional person, yadda, yadda. Autominimize /. ; automaximize corporate intranet.
...AND "First Post" posts.
Wish you had built the installer for my wife's laptops :)
;) However, the Norton's updater that came on my wife's machine is annoying, and the HP updater application on it is by far the most evil, vile, insidious "legit" program I have ever seen on a PC. Most malware authors could learn a thing or two from it. It pops up on her computer on every reboot now, can't be closed unless you subscribe to the updates, and can't be found in the task menu. It's all but taking her laptop hostage. I suppose the PS tools might find and kill it, but I haven't taken the time to do that yet. Seriously, other than the fact that it can be moved so that only a sliver of the window is showing on-screen, the HP-updater is every bit as bad as any malware app.
I added OOo and firefox to her machines, I don't care if Java is on them and Nero isn't bad, so the extras you install would be fine (don't know what VLC is, and I'm too lazy to google it right now
UAC allows you to run as a unprivileged user and escalate, in much the same way as SUDO, to administrator when needed.
UAC and the user privileges in Windows in general and Vista in particular is fundamentally flawed. Saying UAC is similar to sudo is like saying a Mercury Sable is like a Ferrari Testarossa because both are automobiles. There may be some similarities, but one is far more enjoyable to use than the other.
In fact even if you run as administrator you are actually running as an unprivileged user...
But that is part of the problem! On my *Nix boxes, if I log in as root, I can do anything on my system. Consequently, I rarely run as root, and when I do, I put on my paranoid hat so I don't screw things up. When I log in with my normal user account, I don't have administrative privileges unless I preface my command with "sudo". Furthermore, unless I type "sudo" before the command I want to run, it doesn't run with admin privileges when I not logged in as root, period. This is a sane compromise between usability and security. Use root only when necessary (rare) and use a non-privileged account the rest of the time. The distinction between the root user and non-privileged accounts is clear and distinct at all times.
On the other hand, Vista's excruciatingly poor permissions design ended up blurring the lines between superuser (root/Administrator), power user (non-privileged with sudo access) and non-privileged user even worse than before. Even as Administrator, you still aren't an administrator in Vista, unless you use the "run as" option (wt*?!?!?! Am I admin or not?) And non-privileged users can still infect Vista with a virus thanks to UAC elevating everyone on the whole freaking system to superuser status. As anyone who has ever clicked "Ok" through force of habit when an "Are you sure" alert window popped up can tell you, clicking through a prompt is a poor substitute for retyping your credentials to escalate privileges. Furthermore, as a sys admin, I like being able to lock down user accounts with a sudoers file so that not everyone can escalate privileges. Perhaps Vista has something similar, but I haven't found it yet (in all fairness, I also haven't looked very hard, so this might just be a reflection of my experience with *Nix and lack thereof with Vista).
If Vista and UAC work for you, then more power to you. But FWIW, my opinion is that UAC is a poor substitute for sudo.
Arghh...parent post's score is currently "1, Troll" despite being insightful and even phrased politely ("please learn the difference ...", emphasis mine).
Rather ironic, and proof that the mods are in a rather malevolent mood today [:rolleyes:]
Another thing to consider: Your friends' preinstalled copy of Vista is going to be garbage because of all the broken sometimes unremovable shovelware. Ditto for the restore image on the recovery partition or the CDs, and doubly so if it's a laptop. All the computers I see (laptops especially) are practically unusable, even fresh after a recovery partition. Install from a regular boxed-copy Vista disc, type in the OEM key (you'll have to back up your activation or give Microsoft's automated line a call) and the same laptop will fly.
In fairness, I don't suppose that can really be blamed on Microsoft since all the crapware on an OEM installation is installed by, well, the OEM installer :) However, having said that, I really can't say that purchasing a PC (desktop or laptop) and then shelling out another $150-200 for the O/S (full version, not upgrade) is a good answer to the problem -- nor is pirating a copy because I already "own" Vista. Screw that; I can legally get Ubuntu (or Gentoo or Slackware or CentOS....) for free.
I dont think Vista was that bad OS after a little bit more powerful hardware came out and after you got used to it.
To each their own, and if Vista works for you, then that's great. Ultimately, a computer is a tool, and I promise not to get offended if a different tool works better for you than the one I use :)
However, my experience with Vista has been somewhat different. My wife has bought two Vista laptops in the last year, despite my suggestions to buy something -- anything -- else. Quite frankly, if Vista had worked for her, I'd have said the same thing to her that I said to you...but it doesn't (thus the second laptop), and since I am a sys admin by day, she comes to me with her computer problems. Here are a couple of examples:
*) Network printers: she still has a desktop running 2K that has an HP-882C printer attached to it. The printer is shared, and every other machine we own (including my Linux desktop, laptop and server) can print to this printer. The Vista laptop can print to the printer, too...until she reboots. Then I have to manually add the printer again. I have tried adding the printer with the GUI, adding the printer with the "net use" command from the CLI, etc., etc., but every time she reboots, the printer is gone and I have to add it back. I finally set up a Dell network printer, which for some reason known only to the Vista kernel, manages to persist through reboots.
*) Security: Both of her laptops were Compaqs (like Vista, also against my recommendation, but I digress), and were bought new. After her first Compaq was compromised by a virus (despite having A/V on the machine and yes, I patch and update O/S and A/V regularly), I reinstalled from the source CDs that came with her laptop and reinstalled A/V. Shortly afterwards, it was again infected. My wife lets our 8-year old play with the laptop when the two of them are at my wife's business after school and -- again, against my recommendations -- our daughter is usually logged in on my wife's admin account. Microsoft's security and NOD32 A/V is no match for a third grade girl's surfing habits (on-line games, mostly) -- thus the second laptop which our daughter is not allowed to touch, sigh.
*) Run as Administrator and UAC: despite what you said about UAC (
What comes to UAC, it's the correct direction, but lots of Windows userbase is general audience which would get annoyed with such in Linux and other OS too.
), well...they are a step in the right direction, but IMHO, they were poorly conceived, poorly designed and poorly implemented. The first time I tried to do an ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew on my wife's Vista and found out that 1) you must have admin privileges to run those commands and 2) once you opened a CLI, you couldn't then call for Admin privileges a la "sudo" but instead had to go back to the start menu and run the "cmd" command as Administrator, yes, I was pretty annoyed. Having used sudo on *Nix systems for nearly a decade, I could not understand what genius in Redmond thought that launching an entire *command shell* as Admin was a better idea. Sudo times out after 5 minutes; the CLI is Admin until you close it. And you can run sudo at any time -- you don't have to open a new shell with sudo to get admin privileges. Yech. As for UAC, did you ever click "Ok" by force of habit instead of "Cancel" when you accidentally tried to delete a file? Do you really think UAC will be any better? Those "general audience" users you mentioned will soon be merrily clicking through UAC alert windows installing God-only-knows-what (if they aren't already). The only saving grace to UAC, IMHO, is that at least you might not be expecting a confirmation window to pop up if something tries to covertly install malware. Perhaps a savvy user will at least have a chance to think about wh
That is a load of crap.
If there is a loophole in a law that allows my hypothetical company to dump toxic waste into the municipal water supply -- but it saves my company money -- then I would ABSOLUTELY be to blame for taking a legal action that was clearly harmful to my community. Whether or not the law is broken, I have a moral imperative to act ethically. Certainly there are grey areas, where what you do might not be particularly nice, but isn't actively harmful (for example, your average political ad) but when you begin abusing the law for profit, you've stepped out of the grey and into the black.
You can't condemn a company for following the law, just because it seems wrong.
Wanna bet? Legal != ethical. I can give you a whole host of examples where something might be ethical but not legal and vice versa.
Very cool -- thanks for the link!
Apparently not