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In addition to Adblock Plus, NoScript, Ghostery, Cookie Monster and RequestPolicy, I also use RefControl, which may be of interest to y'all. Together they make browsing new sites pretty painful, but once a site is set up how you like it it's all good.

Thanks for the tip on Collusion.

Ehtyar.

Gmail will do calendars in Outlook. A business account is $50/yr/pp.

Ehtyar.

I haven't read the thread, but I will be waiting for 9 in the hopes that Microsoft come to their senses. If not, I'll either continue to wait depending on how Windows 7 support is still going or finally try to make the move to Linux as my primary desktop OS, though that would make using Windows at work painful.

Ehtyar.

$50k wouldn't fund research for a terribly long time - especially without the ancillary resources available to the government. Typical government - "look, we're doing something about it!" when really they're just frivolously spending your money. Wonder how much it costs them per year to handle all the reports and followup.

Ehtyar.

Any company not comparing every major password breach against their own users' credentials (especially the freakin' staff!!) (not to mention having a higher authentication barrier for staff) should be ****.

Ehtyar.

Not sure how much control you're after, but for the sake of completeness ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick convert with the -append switch will join images.

Ehtyar.

My hope is that any kind of significant widespread monitoring of the internet will serve to promote the use of SSL. Granted SSL is flawed, and will continue to get more expensive to implement until Microsoft wake the f**k up or IPv6 is fully deployed, but it should be sufficient to protect those of us who care (and thus keep one of our own eyes on the SSL certs and ciphers our browsers are accepting).

Ehtyar.

Ehtyar.

[attach]

Ehtyar.

As though we needed a reason to institutionalize Stevie.

Spoons.

That. Was. Brilliant.

Ehtyar.

[Generic Code]

Since the conversion will be in bulk, I'd recommend making direct use of ffmpeg (powers most video converters including the aforementioned winff) or mencoder (sister to mplayer - choose/find a build that suits) (alt1) (alt2).

If using ffmpeg, you're probably after a command line similar to this (audiophiles/videophiles please stop reading here):

Formatted for Generic Code with the GeSHI Syntax Highlighter [copy or print]
ffmpeg -i "<input>" -vcodec libxvid -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -sameq -f avi "<output>"

See docs here for any other bells and whistles you might find useful. Be warned that using -sameq is likely to make some of your videos rather large - consider modifying bit/frame rates or frame size to compensate (lossy).

Ehtyar.

Would GrepWin do?

Ehtyar.

rename.pl 

Ehtyar.

As though we needed an excuse to switch to Jabber/XMPP.

Ehtyar.

Reads like satire. If everyone in this thread so far hadn't taken it seriously, I'd be inclined to think it was a joke.

Ehtyar.

People still use Winzip?

People still use WinRAR?

Ehtyar.

To avoid this problem, avoid mom-and-pop projects that don't take your money!

Or get your sh!t out of the "cloud", and stick to Free Software that you contribute to.

Ehtyar.

Up until recently, browser compatibility. Same reason we're still using dedicated IPs for SSL instead of server name indication. However, I'd agree that there is no longer an excuse for either of these not being implemented.

Ehtyar.

+1 Gigabyte. I've no experience with ASROCK personally, though my last employer used ASROCK in the white boxes they built before switching to dell, and many of the more recent white boxes often outlasted the Dells (though that's not saying much).

Ehtyar.

Jeez I wish I had this kind of spare time.

Ehtyar.

I must say I am a member of the naive club here.

Most of my troubles had been with clothing - fabric that just doesn't hold up, pairs of pants typically last me months, not years. For quite some time I've been considering things before I buy them in relation to how long I expect them to last. I now purchase pants and shoes from stores that sell to tradesman, I purchase business laptops for personal use (my lenovo laptops are without a doubt the longest lasting and most indestructible pieces of technology I own), I build my own desktops from parts from vendors who have a history of avoiding bad capacitor suppliers and so on. Without being consciously aware of it, I've spent the past few years of my life gradually moving from mainstream purchasing behaviours to ones I expect to result in the best possible longevity of what i buy.

The Lightbulb Conspiracy has made me very concious of this process now. I'm at a point now where I'm happy with almost all the products I purchase, longevity-wise.

That said, watching that video made me absolutely livid, and I'm astounded that the ongoing degradation of quality has not been more noticeable to the general populace. Products from certain companies with bad reputations always struck me as obviously of low quality in one aspect or another, but intentionally designing them to fail brings corporations down to a whole new low. My first thought was "how is this legal?!?!", but you quickly come to realise that those who would be in a position to protect consumers from this type of behavour are most likely getting more than their fare share of the money getting thrown at bad products. Disgusting.

Ehtyar.

- was bugged as hell - dunno how does it work now,

As mentioned previously, this was resolved fairly early on. Apparently Steam released the game prior to completion.

- multiplayer was not fun for me at all - too many things on the screen for such low resolution.

Not sure what you mean by this.

Ehtyar.

+1 for Security Essentials. I agree with all the other choices except for Firewall - those things generate more confusion than helpfulness, and I don't see how they help prevent infection (assuming the machine is not directly connected to the Internet, in which case you're buggered regardless).

As for rescuing the machine, I'd probably just schedule restore point creation daily or something like that. Little effort involved, and it should sort out most types of infection.

Should any businessy types come across this thread, a skim of the NSA hardening guides (page erroring at time of writing, google cache here) can provide you with some helpful nuggets.

Ehtyar.

I should also mention that you're gonna want a few hours of solo play under your belt to get the hang of casting and pick up some of the more elementary magicks. Generally speaking, the more powerful spells involve more (or more complex arrangements of) the elements, so if you wanna dive into co-op or duel as quick as possible looking a few up online might not be a bad idea.

A few hours? I had the idea of just playing through the campaign from the beginning (as a noob) cooperatively with someone else. Is that not a good idea?

Well I'd expect you'd have trouble contributing to gameplay. As with any game, experience makes a better player, so the experienced player would likely end up walking the noob through the levels. If both players were noobs, it wouldn't be a problem though.

Ehtyar.

I should also mention that you're gonna want a few hours of solo play under your belt to get the hang of casting and pick up some of the more elementary magicks. Generally speaking, the more powerful spells involve more (or more complex arrangements of) the elements, so if you wanna dive into co-op or duel as quick as possible looking a few up online might not be a bad idea.

Ehtyar.