Messages

1

Living Room / Re: Should I switch from xp to vista?

« on: April 24, 2009, 10:41 AM »

Geez. I guess 2 moderators do make a right. I bow to your combined wisdom, and hereby grovel in a most earnest and humble expression of regret that I ever whispered a syllable of condescension at the wonder that is this forums top-level experts. From the very depth of my programming ilk I could never have imagined that my heart was as a mere clock cycle of time, never amounting to anything useful unless, dare I say, it's beating to the rhythm of your wise analogies and succinct but yet somehow informative reviews as I read them with breathless anticipation seeking if I be so wise those seeds of genuine interest to all whose eyes fall upon them.
Greater still must be your physical prowess for as you illuminate so clearly you've managed, probably through some manner of ultimate mind control, to make your heart beat the same rate whether you're climbing mount Everest or sitting in front of the TV, a skill I do so wish (dare I believe my attendance to this forum may lend me some partial understanding of this power) to emulate, lo someday master. To this very splendid goal of optimism of what can be if I but shut my crude, uneducated trap and read herewith and learn from thou wisest of the wise, I can only beg the benefits that have given you such a lauded, multi-syllabled monocle of wisdom, and may I someday join your ranks, step as proudly through the posts of those like myself of lesser knowledge and wisen them also.
I will wait with baited breath as an undisciplined child, cowering in shame, but willing to aspire to and learn from your greatness, if you will forgive my insolence.

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Living Room / Re: Recommend to me the BEST USB stick to get

« on: April 24, 2009, 12:31 AM »

Flash memory kit at Newegg for $23:
here
The actual memory component is very small, about as small as possible, and ported in the larger part you see with the lanyard attached. The lanyard is actually attached to the memory holder itself by a small ring of plastic which broke off of mine along with another small piece of plastic. What's left is in the picture below. That is essentially the memory adapter which you plug the 8GB micro-flash into. So on the up-side, it's very small and you can plug any size micro-memory chip into it. On the downside, this specific design failed after a short while due to lots of use. I now have to figure out how to make it able to attach to my keyring again and I'm good to go. By the way, this is very fast, with speeds of over 10 MB/s typical; faster than my 8GB Corsair Voyager at around 8 MB/s. That thing will last forever though.

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Living Room / Re: Should I switch from xp to vista?

« on: April 23, 2009, 11:48 PM »

First, for those reading your response and thinking, "oh, this guy's got a 'Honorary' next to his name. He Must speak wisely and truthfully", I must correct your very first statement, oh Wise one. Any OS uses All the clock cycles it is given, whether they are used wisely or wasted; they are All 'eaten up'. Now to the meat.
Aside from your 'general feelings' about Vista, your accumulated 'hate' for some features, bugs, etc. and your specific 'taste' for an OS (I might not want to know the specifics  ), my main gripe is exemplified by your illustrious rendition of an attempt to box me into a corner with guilt that I had dissed this forum, when in fact you've laid the groundwork for my Proof!
As witness to my unfounded ramblings, see where you have used expressions such as 'too little memory', 'dog slow', 'filesystem caching and the shouting of mouthes' (which disses those who may have a point that you fail to invalidate), 'usage stats' ( ), 'expect it to run smoothly' (an unvalidated assumption, probably as reliable as those 'shouting of mouthers' and 'people who bitch'), 'feels smoother than XP', 'able hardware', acceleration purely with shaders, though, since that leaves some otherwise capable fixed-function hardware without acceleration' (simply gobble-d-gook), 'eats up more resources' (what and where, and how is this different from eating up clock cycles and slowing things down, My Point Exactly), 'if my workstation crashed today, I'd be installing Vista' (you would reinstall your OS because it crashed????  ), 'UAC..., a trade off between security and annoyance' (doesn't that depend on how often one attempts system functions that call upon this feature?), 'since harddrives is the major bottleneck in my system' (like, your computer is different how? and since when is this not a antiquated bus system issue?), 'More aggressive prefetcher and disk cache. VS2008 starts faster on my 7200rpm...' (apparently you've figured out a way to successfully compare large apples to small oranges), 'Smoother GUI and (non-hacky) live previews' (sorry, but another  ), blah, blah, blah, then, 'default Vista install is too bloated' (by which I assume you mean that it takes up too much space in memory and eats up too many clock cycles doing unnecessary crap).
Seriously, could I refer to this overview as bloat-babble? I rest my case.

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Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« on: April 23, 2009, 11:04 PM »

If you had a bevy of babes waiting for you in the basement, would you prefer to chain them to the wall and leave them locked in a sound-proof room until you wanted to visit them, or would you rather they partied like there's no tomorrow and were readily available for you to enjoy? I think he's considered the irksome and I might add not so reliable notion of encrypting them to lock them away from prying eyes. But the enjoyment and access factors clearly outweigh the element of security. And I guess if it is understood that the privacy of his personal computer and all it's records is to be respected by the rels, there's going to have to be a clear record Somewhere of what Is available to the rels prying eyes.
I'm sure that there are many people with porn and other things that they wouldn't want there rels and friends, or possibly even business associates to find on their computers, so this more general problem has to be taken as seriously as specific records that Should be revealed to pertinent individuals upon the death of the owner. On-the-fly encryption methodologies aren't any more reliable than the computer system that they're run on. Would you trust an amassed precious collection of software, data, etc. to Any such system running on a Windows machine? In actuality there are three levels of security in most systems of this secure sort, and none of these involves an on-the-fly encryption system. The first is a secure building with good security to even get into in the door. The second is Trustworthy personnel, and the third is your basic username-password system, and that's all. In fact, my freind works for such an institution where he is highly trusted and the level of security to access the most sensitive data he has access to is a simple username-password system, and the data is worth millions of dollars!

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Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« on: April 23, 2009, 03:53 PM »

Woo-hoo, my babies back online...Whew!
Anyway, this situation reminded me of one of my best friends. He lives alone, is a computer programmer, and has a Ton of porn on his computer. Not the nasty stuff, more like Playboy pics, in the Millions! He comes from a family of hawty-tawty edubacated's that he's damn sure will Not accept him if they knew about his little cache of babe pics. So recently when his brother the dentist (and kids) stayed for awhile, he had to bump up his computer security to 'red' level to hide it all. But if he were to kick off, the general level of security (can you say, "weak-ass OS security" in here?) that he's using would most assuredly no keep his rels from exposing his exposing collection, which would then cause his father, and possibly mother, to have a heart attack, his brothers to burn down his house, and in the process my rare collection of Commodore 64 disks that he's storing for me would be destroyed.
Well, far be it for me to encroach on some good-ole family ravings and destruction when they discover their son's perversion, but lest my collection be harmed, maybe I should consider the protection of my own software stash if he should croak. I'm sure there are many people with items stored at their friend's places that might have issues with the rels if they didn't know about them. In any case, and in particular this case, I'm thinking that his solution should be to keep a copy of his financial data on an external server, make the info relatively easy for the rels to get at, and Really tighten down the security of that collection, just in case. And possibly a living will. And a note about my collection (and maybe throw in that stand-alone William's Defender game machine .

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Living Room / Re: Should I switch from xp to vista?

« on: April 23, 2009, 03:29 PM »

Diet after diet and people continue to complain that one is Better than the other. Well, the ultimate fact is that if all comes down to caloric intake: the more calories you take in, the more you have to burn off to stay the same weight.
The same goes for your typical OS. Ultimately it comes down to how many things are you expecting it to do at the same time. The more processes you pile into a given input/output operation, the more clock cycles you're going to have to 'burn' to get something done. If you burn more cycles, the whole operation is going to appear 'slower' because the OS is using more clock cycles to get the main job done.
Lacking the specifics regarding how many clock cycles it takes for a given operation, you would have to start with a base measure of each OS (i.e. their most basic state of operation) and look at how much processing is being done at any given moment. Now compare that to how long it takes to perform an additional operation and you'll begin to have a measure of how much additional work it takes for each OS to perform that 'type' of task, to load a file, for example.
It's all Very basic on paper, but much more work in real life. I have yet to see anything close to this type of analysis being done, even a basic measure in terms of seconds taken to do this or that, in a comparison of these two OS's. Very weak indeed.
Maybe the discussion should be slanted to "which sites/forums Do have such useful info?" so that we can all go There instead for Real Answers?

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Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« on: April 22, 2009, 12:27 PM »

A friend of mine who I was seeing on the sly, suddenly went off-line from chat claiming she was seriously ill. During the next few days, I continued to leave messages of my concern, deep concern if you know what I mean.  The days grew into a week. I can't call her since in the worst case scenario the phone would be answered by someone I don't wish to speak with obviously. If anyone else gets on her computer to check her chat records to see if there is someone that needs to be contacted due to her impending or actual death, my days of concerned chat will come bubbling to the surface like vinegar and baking soda as the first things that they see. It could be humiliating and harmful to either of us in the wrong hands.
Well, I'm hoping that she's fine. Since we met this is the longest we've ever gone without contact at least through chat. I need her in my life, and I would be devastated if she expired, but it would be even worse if I found out through someone else who was investigating our chat. I know that she didn't use a password for the chat program, or anywhere else on her machine. In this case, the security would be better off Kept from Everyone. This is one possible negative consequence of all this concern.
I'm still waiting for her to contact me.

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Living Room / Re: The need to unplug and recharge is upon me

« on: April 22, 2009, 11:56 AM »

I think you all is gettin' the wrong point. Using a computer IS a sedentary activity; it IS rest. It doesn't Require a different sedentary activity to 'relax', it requires some 'activity' because it's a living, breathing machine. It even animates if you let it. In fact, it needs it. Just try to remain totally still for as long as you can and you'll find it increasingly difficult since your body has it's own mechanisms to get your ass, and every other part of your body, Moving to regain the advantages that accrue from physical movement, such as increasing your blood circulation to the extremeties that aren't well reached by the pressure from the heart muscles alone. You Think you need to Rest because your brain activity is showing signs of fatigue and stress because you're forcing it to use the limited nutrients and oxygen it can get from the limited motion of your sedentary position in a chair for hours.
If your brain doesn't Get proper circulation, you're in trouble. The brain will actually put you to sleep if you don't vary your mental activity. Does that mean you're tired? No. It means that the brain is designed to continually process New information; to form New associations, and to be on alert for danger by taking in all the stimulus around you in the form of auditory and physical sensations. If you've deadened all possible elements of these sensations by sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room with little distractions, your brain is just taking in the same stimuli over and over, sort of like staring at the lines in the middle of the road at night, and your brain will purposely put you to sleep.

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Living Room / Re: Should I switch from xp to vista?

« on: April 22, 2009, 11:15 AM »

Windows 7 is going to be awesome! The average person will notice a complete turn-around in the time it takes to do virtually Everything. Many folks new to computers will experience the shallowest of learning curves compared to previous OS's, because the souped up GUI will make operating a computer as easy as using a toaster. Windows 7 will make a tremendous difference in the productivity cycle of anyone in the software development industry because of it's enhanced intra-layer communication with the hardware and distinctly superior memory handling. Gone will be most of the pre-Windows DOS elements that limit memory and I/O throughout the typical PC system. Apple is expected to take a tremendous financial hit by the end of next year as most of the corporations now sticking with XP or thinking of moving off-Windows will jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon as review after review of systems with Windows 7 are expected to prove its worthiness beyond any previous OS used in a business setting. This includes the new enhanced security layers that some experts are calling 'armor-ware' compared to any previous OS.
Stephen Hawking has even been quoted as saying that if Windows 7 demonstrates what early studies already indicate about its speed and dependability, he will for the first time install a version of Windows, Windows 7, on his speech-control system. The future is very bright for this wonderful new OS.
And I'm taking requests for 3 wishes from everyone that supports my Wish List site for only 99 cents a wish.   

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Living Room / Re: Is your online life in your will? (Backups, passwords, etc.)

« on: April 21, 2009, 01:40 AM »

What's wrong with letting someone you trust know what your password is and where your backup data is stored? In such a case, isn't this the same as having valuables in a lock box?

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Living Room / Re: The need to unplug and recharge is upon me

« on: April 21, 2009, 01:35 AM »

I've always had to get some exercise, and studies show that the brain works better when a person does get some often. Some companies promote periodic exercise breaks that may only include some torso and head twisting and stretches, but they've proven to help boost productivity and job satisfaction. Some people actually feel that sweating is a repulsive condition indicating that a person is having to expend too much effort doing something, rather than a natural means that the body uses to eliminate waste (it's true, sweat is similar to urine). I've seen teenagers and older folks with a hump in their neck from just playing video games and not getting out to get some kind of exercise. I shoot some baskets or ride my bike to the store at Least, but several times a week I Must get a few hours of exercise. It also invigorates the sex drive, which both partners will probably enjoy. 

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Living Room / Re: Recommend to me the BEST USB stick to get

« on: April 21, 2009, 01:23 AM »

Well, obviously you can buy one based on several important features, GB's, looks, durability, and convenience being the most important. I'm a computer tech, and I carry around the tools of my trade, plus extra stuff like movies, and the 8 GB Voyager  has sufficient GB's, looks fine, is pretty darn durable, but as far as convenience, I had to tie a string to the cap so I wouldn't lose it (although it would never just fall off due to the rubber grip it has), and it is rather bulky to plug in around tight areas with lots of cables. I didn't include speed because I don't see many people needing top speed any more than I do, and it varies depending on file size and port speed (some people still have 1.1 USB). I've tried others that were a combination of plastic and metal (the majority), and some fell apart eventually, lost their spring or tension where it counted, and some are inconvenient to plug in alongside other cords. I guess the thing to remember is that you're not guaranteed that any particular feature won't disappoint you after some use or under some circumstance, and you better be ready to swallow your dignity when it begins to fail you or you have to find a 'work around'.

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Living Room / Re: Should I switch from xp to vista?

« on: April 21, 2009, 12:57 AM »

I personally think that the os is primarily used as a backbone for the Real software, the games and apps that make life great, and not at all otherwise important. I fail to see why anyone has to have all the fancy graphics (isn't that included with the games?), or use the crappy utils included with the os which are outdated rather quickly and can't keep up with the new features that become available with pro apps. Do you really need to Play a movie in your windows explorer, or use the os to burn your discs because you don't like the free Nero that comes with Every burner?
And as far as the os being 64-bit, how big are those letters you type, how many equations do you have in your spreadsheet, how much imperceptibly smoother does that movie have to play, and are you really so good at that fps that you have to have lightening fast graphics to make those incredibly subtle moves that keep you in the top 10 of players? Give me and everyone else that's Average a break! Because you Think you need 64-bit, that doesn't mean you're automatically getting the props for being Worthy of the additional speed or processing power that I'm sure you can't possibly Need, and even if it's 32-bit like Most people, you probably wouldn't use the full potential of a modern day system produced within the last 6 or 7 years. We are talking about a 'general purpose' computer aren't we? Get Real!