Quite true - the industry is certainly making me reconsider cable completely. With OTA HD (now that I have a suitable tuner in MythTV) and Hulu-type sites (streamed to the PS3 via Playon) I wonder if I can sever the cable-cord completely... oooh that would be nice.
What's more, I get better picture quality that way - Comcast has been delivering poor picture to me for the past many years, and continues to blow me off with support/service. I hate Comcast...
Agreed - I found AVG to work well on lesser machines, and it was usually able to detect more than the outgoing virus checker (often McAfee), as it would always find things that shouldn't have been there (not just leftover reg keys either - exes and dlls). Of course, this is not something you can measure, so I can't show you documented proof anywhere about this... which is why I reference detection rate, as it's a metric (though, as I mentioned, it should be taken with a grain of salt.)
So, what better "review" can you point me to? Or, where is this review that says AVG is "the worst" Mr. OP?
Yeah, I had tried Combofix on this one virus, but it was entrenched into the safe-mode startup for windows as well... very weird. I couldn't get Combofix to let me at it, but it couldn't see the file (cloaking after activated, I imagine)... so I had to use a Linux boot disk to get at the file that way. Got it out finally, but it was a good one.
I won't disagree that NOD32 is an excellent scanner... but AVG is certainly not "the worst". I don't know where you get your data from, but at http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/home.html (follow Comparatives, then On-demand to get to the chart) you can see that AVG got 94.3% detection. Avast was slightly better than that at 97.3%. NOD32, interestingly enough, got a 93.0% detection. I'm not saying AVG or Avast is better, but with that information you can't say it's "the worst" either.
I've had far better experiences with AVG and Avast on my machines, as well as my customer's computers, than McAfee (84.4%) or Trend, for example. I've only experienced 1 virus in the recent past (a rootkit, no less) that was not cleanable by AVG/Avast... had to do that manually. On that machine, the virus got in past McAfee... for what it's worth.
Anyway, so with the data above... what's your reference for saying that AVG is "the worst"?
Umm, your link shows an article that says it sold $170-million in a day. So, maybe it sold $300-million for the week, but certainly not 300-million-units. Needless to say, both dollar-amounts are clearly far less than 1 billion DOLLARS.
You could simply disable the linkscanner (and then tell it's panel that it's "ok" that it's not on) or not-install it during the custom installation process. It doesn't bother me anymore! Besides that, I can't stand Avast's interface... it's just plain confusing and annoying. What's with the "VCR" style panel?!
That being said, I have used AVG on many machines, and it works pretty well. I also disable the automatic daily scan, as it seems rather unnecessary to do this daily. What's more, it prevented me from getting bitten by the recent issue of a false-positive detection of a windows file. Keep in mind, most free virus scanners seem to have high false-positive rates.
My box: Via KT133A chipset (Epox brand board) - yeah, THAT old NVidia 5200 video card (using composite-out, ick) 512MB RAM (DDR, I think? Started at 256MB originally) Athlon XP 1800+ CPU with Spire CPU fan (quiet!) Hauppauge PVR-150 (on-board MPEG2 encoder version) Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard (I think... or similar chipset) 160GB Seagate HD, I think
System worked great off a plain Mythbuntu install (aside from using EnvyNG to get the proper NVidia drivers easily loaded). I think I have since run 2 updates on it (ie, not very frequently!) so it's probably "out of date" in that sense. It used to have MythDora 2.32 on it, but I prefer the Ubuntu update system, and am a little more familiar with it than Fedora, so I stuck with it. Besides which, newer Mythdora builds required a DVD-R to install - this machine doesn't have a DVD drive ATM... CDROM only.
I'm happy with the config (all old computer parts, so it didn't cost me much to put together - only bought the PVR150, rest was leftover hardware). Analog TV takes quite a bit of tweaking to get a "good quality" picture. Still have some more tweaking to do. It compares pretty well versus my Series1 Tivo, though some shows leave a thin black-bar on the left side of the screen only (42" Panny Plasma)... but then the Tivo has been doing that on this TV at Medium or Basic quality levels too. My older 32" Sony Vega CRT didn't have any such issues. I love the auto-commercial skip in Myth, and the rest of the interface is quite simple. I tweaked some of the menus and remote controls a bit manually, but it wasn't technically necessary. I just wanted to fiddle in there a bit, and it was easy enough to do.
I'm hoping to "run into" a HDMI-capable video card so I can run HDMI to the TV instead (hoping for a PQ improvement) but I'm too cheap to actually spend money on a suitable card, especially with such old hardware. I'm also looking forward to getting GPU-accelleration on video, which is "coming soon" to newer video-card GPUs... so that's keeping me from upgrading ATM too.
It should be noted that many generators don't always put out a true sinusoidal wave, and some also don't put out the proper "120VAC" - they drift up or down depending on load, capacity, and changes in the load. For this reason, many logic-level electronics may have issues with generator power. Motors tend to not care as much (though they can make funny noises on the weird waveform) but more sensitive electronics can simply fail due to the voltage or waveform issues. A friend of mine in NH recently blew his furnace's logic-boards (oil furnace) while on the generator. He was told that his logic boards were more sensitive than the replacements, but the furnace-guy told him this was common on generators.
All I'm saying is, beware of running fancy electronics on generators, unless you get a line conditioner that can modify (buck/boost) the voltage and clean up the sine wave.
As PitaBred lists below, power supplies are often the source of the problem. As I mentioned above, I never leave my work-machine running 24x7, and it has never had a board failure or drive failure of note - certainly not "every year or so". Even my parent's "crappy" eMachine gets turned on and off 3-5 times a day (I tell them not to do this) doesn't have any failures after 4 years of running.
I also run a computer services company, and I have never seen anyone's computer die from power cycling. There are many that have had blown crappy power supplies, but never a board or drive failure due to power cycling. That's a lot of computers, and a lot of customers. So, I still don't buy your explanation... it just doesn't make sense statistically. Maybe you're just unlucky, or maybe you're doing something wrong...
140W or not... it's still a waste of power... 140W of power. As I mentioned before, we need to stop being lazy about turning things off, even if the power is cheap.
Are you kidding me? Unless you are buying crappy components, a person who uses their home computer for 5 hours per day will certainly benefit from turning it off for the rest of the time (when you are at work or sleeping) without affecting the reliability of the computer. Leaving it running for 19 hours of idle-time is a waste of power. At a typical 200W of idle-power consumption, that's a lot of wasted power.
As for reliability, you're computer must be pretty unhappy because my 8-year-old computer still has no issues running to this day, even though it was turned off daily when it was my "main computer" and now runs as my MythTV box which does run 24x7 for TV-duty. With all that powering on/off in its early life, and the 24x7 life it's running now, the original hardware is still running just fine.
None of my computers (20+ years of experience, if you want to play that game) have ever had hardware failures by turning them on and off daily.
Sure, if you turn it on/off 5 times a day, yes, you could reduce the life of the hardware... but turning it off when you're gone for 8-19 hours per day is just good practice.
As for the original article, it's time that we, as a country, look at energy savings for the sake of saving energy. Just because it's costs very little to be lazy doesn't mean we should continue to be lazy. Turn off the darn thing when you're not using it! Of course, the opposite is true too: if you ARE using it, then don't feel bad about it!
I agree - I have had no end of issues with Norton Ghost starting with version 9, but Acronis (though not free) has been utterly simple to use and totally worth it.
Ummm... except that it's not FREE
Personally, I have not had any issues with AVG. There was an issue with AVG on Vista with Windows Mail (the built-in email software), but if you disable the email scanner, then it seems to work fine.
See, since pirates prefer these older programs, it means that the anti-piracy measures really ARE working, because the pirates don't like dealing with it! We told you so!
1) If it's not for tracking purposes, then why do they want to make it contact-less at all? There is no reason they couldn't implement the same thing in a machine-readable format (contact-chip or whatever) instead of RFID. It would probably be cheaper, too. The simple requirement of RFID implies that it's being used for tracking. And, as others have said, RFID CAN be read at longer distances than originally thought possible... I recommend you do some reading on the matter.
Umm... OXIDATION requires oxygen... so in that case, Nitrogen would be acceptable. Noble gases might be better overall, since they are Noble... but none of these would allow the item to oxidize...
He would be horrible, since it would leak out very quickly and easily. Argon might be acceptable...
Yeah, like Thinkpads aren't crackable?
Sure, it's not "easy" as you have to get access to the motherboard, but it's not that hard with the right hardware in hand. Do a Google search and find out just how easy it is.
"Comcast negotiates with municipalities to be the sole cable provider to community."
Because the FCC said they are not required to line-share. I mean, from Comcast's perspective, why would they share the line they put in? It would be bad business. The fact that the FCC is endorsing this is what bothers me.
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Quite true - the industry is certainly making me reconsider cable completely. With OTA HD (now that I have a suitable tuner in MythTV) and Hulu-type sites (streamed to the PS3 via Playon) I wonder if I can sever the cable-cord completely... oooh that would be nice. What's more, I get better picture quality that way - Comcast has been delivering poor picture to me for the past many years, and continues to blow me off with support/service. I hate Comcast...
Since when does "ISP" = "hosting provider"?
I thought they actually shut down a SERVICE provider... not just some dumb web host.
Remember... the only reason Win7 isn't slower than Vista is because it's really only Vista 1.1
Agreed - I found AVG to work well on lesser machines, and it was usually able to detect more than the outgoing virus checker (often McAfee), as it would always find things that shouldn't have been there (not just leftover reg keys either - exes and dlls). Of course, this is not something you can measure, so I can't show you documented proof anywhere about this... which is why I reference detection rate, as it's a metric (though, as I mentioned, it should be taken with a grain of salt.)
So, what better "review" can you point me to? Or, where is this review that says AVG is "the worst" Mr. OP?
Yeah, I had tried Combofix on this one virus, but it was entrenched into the safe-mode startup for windows as well... very weird. I couldn't get Combofix to let me at it, but it couldn't see the file (cloaking after activated, I imagine)... so I had to use a Linux boot disk to get at the file that way. Got it out finally, but it was a good one.
My story, as I fixed it, is posted here: http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/index.php?showtopic=120095&mode=threaded&pid=659165
I won't disagree that NOD32 is an excellent scanner... but AVG is certainly not "the worst". I don't know where you get your data from, but at http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/home.html (follow Comparatives, then On-demand to get to the chart) you can see that AVG got 94.3% detection. Avast was slightly better than that at 97.3%. NOD32, interestingly enough, got a 93.0% detection. I'm not saying AVG or Avast is better, but with that information you can't say it's "the worst" either.
I've had far better experiences with AVG and Avast on my machines, as well as my customer's computers, than McAfee (84.4%) or Trend, for example. I've only experienced 1 virus in the recent past (a rootkit, no less) that was not cleanable by AVG/Avast... had to do that manually. On that machine, the virus got in past McAfee... for what it's worth.
Anyway, so with the data above... what's your reference for saying that AVG is "the worst"?
Recent studies have shown that the famed sound of the Stradivarius violins was not caused by the wood, but by the chemicals used for varnishing: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141228.htm
Umm, your link shows an article that says it sold $170-million in a day. So, maybe it sold $300-million for the week, but certainly not 300-million-units. Needless to say, both dollar-amounts are clearly far less than 1 billion DOLLARS.
You could simply disable the linkscanner (and then tell it's panel that it's "ok" that it's not on) or not-install it during the custom installation process. It doesn't bother me anymore! Besides that, I can't stand Avast's interface... it's just plain confusing and annoying. What's with the "VCR" style panel?!
That being said, I have used AVG on many machines, and it works pretty well. I also disable the automatic daily scan, as it seems rather unnecessary to do this daily. What's more, it prevented me from getting bitten by the recent issue of a false-positive detection of a windows file. Keep in mind, most free virus scanners seem to have high false-positive rates.
A good reference for AV detection rates is http://www.av-comparatives.org/
Quite true. A quick search shows that even XP RC1 was supposed to be as fast as Win2k before it was released. In some cases, it was supposedly slightly faster. Of course, we know that this is not quite the truth/reality. For example, some of the articles:
http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:DdOzbFHRPI8J:thesource.ofallevil.com/windowsxp/home/evaluation/whyupgrade/performance.mspx+xp+release+candidate+faster+than+windows-2000&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
and
http://dgl.com/itinfo/2001/it010716.html
So, as implied by the OP... I'll believe it when I see it.
My box:
Via KT133A chipset (Epox brand board) - yeah, THAT old
NVidia 5200 video card (using composite-out, ick)
512MB RAM (DDR, I think? Started at 256MB originally)
Athlon XP 1800+ CPU with Spire CPU fan (quiet!)
Hauppauge PVR-150 (on-board MPEG2 encoder version)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz soundcard (I think... or similar chipset)
160GB Seagate HD, I think
System worked great off a plain Mythbuntu install (aside from using EnvyNG to get the proper NVidia drivers easily loaded). I think I have since run 2 updates on it (ie, not very frequently!) so it's probably "out of date" in that sense. It used to have MythDora 2.32 on it, but I prefer the Ubuntu update system, and am a little more familiar with it than Fedora, so I stuck with it. Besides which, newer Mythdora builds required a DVD-R to install - this machine doesn't have a DVD drive ATM... CDROM only.
I'm happy with the config (all old computer parts, so it didn't cost me much to put together - only bought the PVR150, rest was leftover hardware). Analog TV takes quite a bit of tweaking to get a "good quality" picture. Still have some more tweaking to do. It compares pretty well versus my Series1 Tivo, though some shows leave a thin black-bar on the left side of the screen only (42" Panny Plasma)... but then the Tivo has been doing that on this TV at Medium or Basic quality levels too. My older 32" Sony Vega CRT didn't have any such issues. I love the auto-commercial skip in Myth, and the rest of the interface is quite simple. I tweaked some of the menus and remote controls a bit manually, but it wasn't technically necessary. I just wanted to fiddle in there a bit, and it was easy enough to do.
I'm hoping to "run into" a HDMI-capable video card so I can run HDMI to the TV instead (hoping for a PQ improvement) but I'm too cheap to actually spend money on a suitable card, especially with such old hardware. I'm also looking forward to getting GPU-accelleration on video, which is "coming soon" to newer video-card GPUs... so that's keeping me from upgrading ATM too.
Interesting... my Mythbuntu box (8.04) has had no issues, and has continued to record programs all day today...
It should be noted that many generators don't always put out a true sinusoidal wave, and some also don't put out the proper "120VAC" - they drift up or down depending on load, capacity, and changes in the load. For this reason, many logic-level electronics may have issues with generator power. Motors tend to not care as much (though they can make funny noises on the weird waveform) but more sensitive electronics can simply fail due to the voltage or waveform issues. A friend of mine in NH recently blew his furnace's logic-boards (oil furnace) while on the generator. He was told that his logic boards were more sensitive than the replacements, but the furnace-guy told him this was common on generators.
All I'm saying is, beware of running fancy electronics on generators, unless you get a line conditioner that can modify (buck/boost) the voltage and clean up the sine wave.
As PitaBred lists below, power supplies are often the source of the problem. As I mentioned above, I never leave my work-machine running 24x7, and it has never had a board failure or drive failure of note - certainly not "every year or so". Even my parent's "crappy" eMachine gets turned on and off 3-5 times a day (I tell them not to do this) doesn't have any failures after 4 years of running.
I also run a computer services company, and I have never seen anyone's computer die from power cycling. There are many that have had blown crappy power supplies, but never a board or drive failure due to power cycling. That's a lot of computers, and a lot of customers. So, I still don't buy your explanation... it just doesn't make sense statistically. Maybe you're just unlucky, or maybe you're doing something wrong...
140W or not... it's still a waste of power... 140W of power.
As I mentioned before, we need to stop being lazy about turning things off, even if the power is cheap.
Are you kidding me? Unless you are buying crappy components, a person who uses their home computer for 5 hours per day will certainly benefit from turning it off for the rest of the time (when you are at work or sleeping) without affecting the reliability of the computer. Leaving it running for 19 hours of idle-time is a waste of power. At a typical 200W of idle-power consumption, that's a lot of wasted power. As for reliability, you're computer must be pretty unhappy because my 8-year-old computer still has no issues running to this day, even though it was turned off daily when it was my "main computer" and now runs as my MythTV box which does run 24x7 for TV-duty. With all that powering on/off in its early life, and the 24x7 life it's running now, the original hardware is still running just fine. None of my computers (20+ years of experience, if you want to play that game) have ever had hardware failures by turning them on and off daily. Sure, if you turn it on/off 5 times a day, yes, you could reduce the life of the hardware... but turning it off when you're gone for 8-19 hours per day is just good practice. As for the original article, it's time that we, as a country, look at energy savings for the sake of saving energy. Just because it's costs very little to be lazy doesn't mean we should continue to be lazy. Turn off the darn thing when you're not using it! Of course, the opposite is true too: if you ARE using it, then don't feel bad about it!
I agree - I have had no end of issues with Norton Ghost starting with version 9, but Acronis (though not free) has been utterly simple to use and totally worth it.
Ummm... except that it's not FREE Personally, I have not had any issues with AVG. There was an issue with AVG on Vista with Windows Mail (the built-in email software), but if you disable the email scanner, then it seems to work fine.
See, since pirates prefer these older programs, it means that the anti-piracy measures really ARE working, because the pirates don't like dealing with it! We told you so!
WICD works wonderfully for me, with zero issues...? http://wicd.sourceforge.net/
1) If it's not for tracking purposes, then why do they want to make it contact-less at all? There is no reason they couldn't implement the same thing in a machine-readable format (contact-chip or whatever) instead of RFID. It would probably be cheaper, too. The simple requirement of RFID implies that it's being used for tracking. And, as others have said, RFID CAN be read at longer distances than originally thought possible... I recommend you do some reading on the matter.
Umm... OXIDATION requires oxygen... so in that case, Nitrogen would be acceptable. Noble gases might be better overall, since they are Noble... but none of these would allow the item to oxidize... He would be horrible, since it would leak out very quickly and easily. Argon might be acceptable...
Forget the "if you're deaf"... How about people just look both ways before crossing. What a concept!
Yeah, like Thinkpads aren't crackable? Sure, it's not "easy" as you have to get access to the motherboard, but it's not that hard with the right hardware in hand. Do a Google search and find out just how easy it is.
"Comcast negotiates with municipalities to be the sole cable provider to community." Because the FCC said they are not required to line-share. I mean, from Comcast's perspective, why would they share the line they put in? It would be bad business. The fact that the FCC is endorsing this is what bothers me.