Recent Posts

1826

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 25, 2014, 12:04 PM »

Now at what point exactly during a routine traffic stop does a police officer have any rational need for somebody's ****ing Credit Report?? ...Or employment history for that matter.

-Stoic Joker (May 24, 2014, 12:01 AM)

And why do prospective employers need access to an applicant's credit report?

-app103 (May 25, 2014, 11:12 AM)

Sometimes in financial institutions, or other jobs where fidelity bonding is the norm, or for procurement officer-type positions, the justification (if you want to call it that) is to attempt to have some assurance the person in question doesn't have "factors" in their life that may affect their decision making or integrity when dealing with (or being around) large sums of money.

There's pros and cons to the argument. But in my experience people with no financial problems aren't all that less likely to do something stupid than most people burdened with serious personal financial problems.

I think most people are basically honest - or they're not.

People who get caught often present their financial problems in an attempt to explain or justify a theft or other malfeasance. Which probably led to the belief that a credit report is also a good indication of somebody's "character." Truth is, all a CR really does show is how often you're able to pay your bills on time.

Perhaps there's a link between bill paying and one's character. But if there is, it's a pretty tenuous one IMHO.

1827

Living Room / Re: Blog Essay: The Indie (Game) Bubble Is Popping

« Last post by 40hz on May 25, 2014, 08:02 AM »

You're seeing the same thing happening with music and literature.

You have a large influx of B-grade and C-grade "talent" glutting the market. (See Kickstarter for some truly cringe-worth examples.) And that's because "everybody has a million dollar hit song or book inside them" according to the people who run those $1500/2-day seminars that "teach you the top secret techniques the pros use." And those that don't charge (i.e. NaNoWriMo) but merely encourage large numbers of the highly motivated and sincere (but still untrained and largely untalented people) are also feeding that glut.

Once you have a market glut and the quality (inevitably) declines significantly, the product quickly becomes generic - and a commodity item. Before long you see the entire market living with generic and commodity level prices.

Professionals cannot compete with low-ball amateurs on price or quality. (Repeat that 3 times.) Low-ball amateurs can, however, quickly force out the professionals - who need to make a living from their craft - and charge appropriately to do so. Excess amateurs in a field do this by lowering standards and reducing customer expectations to the point of indifference, Eventually, the market arrives at the point where the price becomes the only real selection criteria. Because the market is so loaded with junk that most buyers no longer expect (or get) very much for their money.

You'll see this in mature markets all the time: Crap drives out quality. Lower quality results in lower prices. Lower prices necessitates compromise, and attracts amateurs into the field, further lowering overall quality. Lower overall quality produces more crap. Repeat.

Sad state of affairs. But nothing new. It's just finally caught up with the game industry.

1828

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

« Last post by 40hz on May 25, 2014, 06:09 AM »

When was the last time you tried?  I think I originally tried Gentoo 7 or 8 years ago (remember stage 1 and 2?) with much less powerful hardware and this time around it definitely felt much easier.

-ewemoa (May 25, 2014, 01:02 AM)

According to my logbook I go back to the summer of 2003 with Gentoo when I did my first install of it. And I did do a stage-1 install apparently. And no, I don't remember it all that much - but I have about 75 pages worth of notes on it from when I did!

I do recall it was really interesting. But from the number of times I wrote "bloody hell!" in my notes, I apparently didn't consider it "fun" in the usual sense of the word. I remember how annoying it was since I had been using Linux for quite a while before Gentoo came out. (My first Linux foray was Slackware, which I installed for the first time in late-93/early-94 - at which point I decided this Nix stuff was for me! Been hooked ever since.) Gentoo was like starting over.

Every so often I think about trying Gentoo again. But like the dog up above, my very next thought is "what for?" So many distros...so little time y'know? And my main areas of interest don't revolve around the standard desktop environment anyway.

Arch I do like and will continue to use because it's so easy to craft a custom environment owing to how very little it assumes - or does for you.

Gentoo is interesting, and I applaud them for doing something different. And I really like what they did with portage. Borrowing from ports was a smart move on their part. I only wish that had become the dominant installation method for Linux software. Arch apparently felt that way too when they designed pacman. Portage certainly would have save a huge amount of grief in the early days - although those installation hassles are almost completely a thing of the past with today's maintainers and repositories.

The apt/yum/RPM triad works well enough. I'm less happy with the app store and ppa approaches introduced by Ubuntu that some other distros are now starting to look at. But since I'm not about to do my own fork, I guess I can learn to live and work with it. Especially since I built a career on learning to live and work with whatever Microsoft doles out. When in Rome..."think toga" as the saying goes.

 

1829

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO - Mini-Review.

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 02:26 PM »

Malwarebytes has been reported as running without problem with at least a couple of anti-virus programmes.
I'm running it with MS Essentials on Win7; I've heard it works well with Avira free and pro versions.

-tomos (May 22, 2014, 08:43 AM)

I have it peacefully coexisting with AVG, Avira, MSE, and Bitdefender.

The only one of the above that ever did (in my experience) have a real problem with Malwarebytes was Bitdefender. And at the request of many of it's customers, Bitdefender has since made their AV product compatible with Malwarebytes Antimalware right out of the box. Prior to that, there was a workaround group of settings that needed to be adjusted manually for it to work smoothly.

1830

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Malwarebytes FREE and PRO - Mini-Review.

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 01:27 PM »

But hackers increasingly use novel bugs. Symantec's senior vice president for information security estimates antivirus now catches just 45% of cyberattacks.

-tl;dr version

-Stoic Joker (May 24, 2014, 11:44 AM)

Fine...

But even if true, l'd still prefer to take that 45% level of protection they do provide in the absence of anything better.

1831

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 01:24 PM »

 

1832

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 07:05 AM »

And that of course is just the local yokels that haven't quite been mitliterized to the point of completely forgetting their - To Protect and Serve - purpose for employment.

-Stoic Joker (May 24, 2014, 12:01 AM)

They're working on it however, Next round of behavioral conditioning special training they get sent to will fix that.

1833

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 06:51 AM »

@SJ - Dude! You're blocking. Let it out! Tell us how you really feel! 

(kidding...)

1834

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

« Last post by 40hz on May 24, 2014, 06:29 AM »

I get (what I imagine are) similar feelings when trying to follow the instructions to install Gentoo or Arch!

-ewemoa (May 23, 2014, 10:55 PM)

For me, at least the Arch install was mainstream enough that it felt comprehensible and somewhat familiar. (The excellent docs helped a lot too!) A stage-3 Gentoo install, on the other hand, will probably always look and feel weird to me.  

1835

Developer's Corner / Re: Per-User Software Installation (and the like...) Under *NIX

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 06:29 PM »

...
On a slightly related note...I wanted to try the latest version of Sigil but found that it depends on Qt5 -- which appears to require a bit more work than I want to go through to install.  The work-around?  Run the Windows portable version of Sigil via Wine...

-ewemoa (May 23, 2014, 07:55 AM)

The title of that workaround is "Rube Goldberg"  

-Edvard (May 23, 2014, 05:30 PM)

And deserves a round of applause. That's my kind of hack: Sod pretty - just get the job done.


 Like the Clash so famously said: "F*** Art. Let's dance!"
 

1836

Living Room / Re: Website hacking - tools to help spot issues

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 03:43 PM »

^Intent on doing what? Defacing a webpage? Bring it on. I'll just restore the site from backup.

But by not wanting to use pHp or related scripting languages, I was purely interested in doing it my own convenience. Not so much for security reasons. 

1837

Living Room / Re: Website hacking - tools to help spot issues

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 12:20 PM »

Just looking at that MySQL stuff (thanks 40Hz) and I am coming to the conclusion I don't want to do this anymore - too much stuff to learn to be able to be effective and no inclination to learn it.

All I want to do is run a few websites for local people I know and friends and not have to cope with bastards constantly attacking and disrupting everything.

So frustrating!!

Be far simpler in the long run to go back to hand coding pages in HTML without using any scripting languages!!!

-Carol Haynes (May 21, 2014, 08:20 AM)

With you 100% on that.

If I ever do up another website for myself it will definitely be hand-coded HTML and some well crafted CSS. No scripting language wanted or needed, thank you very much!

1838

Living Room / Re: Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords (AKA DOOOOOM)

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 11:43 AM »

One word: FidoNet.

"Let's go living in the past."

-40hz (May 23, 2014, 10:57 AM)

No. Today we have meshnets.

-Renegade (May 23, 2014, 11:15 AM)

Fido would work on a mesh infrastructure. 

I know you hate Reddit, but... it's a good start:

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/

I don't hate Reddit. Just strongly dislike some of the childishness and posturing you find there.

Reddit is one of those things that falls under the:  "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" type of thing for me.

As Socrates said: “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”

Technology cannot be stopped. Something else will rise up. The technocrats cannot win. Ever. Except for those that willfully surrender.

That remains to be seen. A lot depends on who controls the technology and frames the discourse. Look no further than North Korea for a good example of how thoroughly a human brain can be conditioned to believe anything - and act upon it.

This is not over yet.

Agree. Not by a long shot.

1839

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 11:04 AM »

Hmm, I have no interest in hacking into sites... unless Halle Berry is working me over.  

-MilesAhead (May 23, 2014, 09:23 AM)

Somehow I think you'd be interested in doing pretty much anything if the comely Ms. Berry were working you over. (Sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad, right?)  :Thmbsup:

Check her out in The Cloud Atlas. I think I like the way she looks better with longer hair and scruffed up a bit. You?

1840

Living Room / Re: Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords (AKA DOOOOOM)

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 10:57 AM »

One word: FidoNet.

"Let's go living in the past."

1841

Living Room / Re: How to add a file to a PM

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 09:32 AM »

You can, however, put your file up as a shared item on a free personal Dropbox account, and then send your recipient the access link for the file in a PM.

Just make sure you have a legal right to whatever you do put on Dropbox. They do checks for illegal sharing of copyrighted materials.

   

1842

Living Room / Re: Everything Is Broken

« Last post by 40hz on May 23, 2014, 09:08 AM »

Dunno...That particular tale sounds just a little too neat and "made to order" to my ears.

There are a lot of these "I once knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy who hacked {insert details}" tales out there. And people in the IT and IT security communities are just as capable of spinning a "good story" as the next person. Especially if it'll get them a raise or an interview segment on PBS's Tell Me More.

But I suppose (ok I know) it's possible, so I'll give Quinn the benefit of the doubt about her article while I wonder how somebody could possibly compromise over 50,000 remote PCs so easily, and in such a short period of time, without creating so much as a ripple in the IT pond.

That guy must have been good. As in very good.  

1843

Non-Windows Software / Re: Debian Tails OS question

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 09:12 PM »

To remaster Linux Cinnamon, which one of the above would anyone recommend?
Do I need to be working from a HD with Linux, or can I work from Win 7 32-bit?

-bit (May 22, 2014, 02:24 PM)

The official remastering tool for Linux Mint was something called mintconstructor.

Unfortunately, the powers that be over at Mint have since pulled it from their website over a silly snit they were having with some people who were allegedly misusing the Mint logo. More on that kerfuffle can be found here.

Regarding doing a remastering:

A Linux distro is not like a Windows installation. A distro is not just the Linux OS. Most also contain a fairly extensive collection of apps that get installed along with the OS. Things like Firefox, LibreOffice, VLC Media Player, and Thunderbird, and other standard apps are usually included by default. When you install most distros you have a complete environment you can use out of the box. So it's seldom necessary to do a remastered DVD just to put something in. Especially if it's a very popular app.

FWIW, when distros get remastered it's usually either done to strip them down to become a minimal single purpose tool (like GParted) - or to optimize them for a specific family of applications like music or media authoring (ex: DreamStudio, TangoStudio, etc.)

Note: remastering is not always as simple as it sounds. The degree of automation and hand-holding varies widely, and is determined by which distro you use as your base, and which remastering tools are available for it.  If you want to just wade in and give it a go, Edvard's suggestion to try SuseStudio is a good one. That's about as easy a starting point as you'll ever find.

 

1844

Non-Windows Software / Re: Debian Tails OS question

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 02:02 PM »

Edvard I'm glad you answered me here, and 40hz too, b/c I never knew any of this stuff. Thank you once again everyone.  

-bit (May 22, 2014, 01:39 PM)

That's the Linux "community thing" at work. "Helping ourselves by helping each other."



One more reason to become a part of it.

1845

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 01:27 PM »

But - I should mention we also have Cox here (Not. My. Idea...) - my preferred configuration especially with cable companies is to bridge their device to an internal main router that can actually be controlled properly.

-Stoic Joker (May 22, 2014, 07:08 AM)

Now that suggestion is worth it's weight in gold. Even if you have to argue with your supplier to let you do it.

I almost got into a fistfight with a cable service to get them to turn off the friggin' DHCP and NAT on their router,  supplied to my client who was paying for a /29 fixed IP service. They had wanted me to use "sticky" IP assignments for our fixed addresses because it somehow magically made the cable company's "ability to remotely test and maintain the client's router easier." (Which really doesn't make any sense at all. This hokey techno-BSing must be a cable thing!)

It took about twenty minutes and conversations with three separate idiots before I finally got a grownup on the line who reluctantly put the router in bridge mode and left the rest of the driving to us.

Sometimes you just have to stand your ground to get the job done right.

1846

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 01:08 PM »

they decided to jump on that Godaddy /Microsoft combo hosted 365 exchange  !!:(
I can say this .  IF???>>> they ever get ther bugs worked out,  This is one amazing commo package.  I am not a "frills tech".  I only care a bout reliability and speed.

-questorfla (May 22, 2014, 02:29 AM)

Can't speak for GoDaddy's offering, but I have clients that subscribed directly to the full MS Office365 package which they're accessing through a "business grade" AT&T DSL connection, and the results are exceptionally impressive. At least to my eyes.

The critical factor is having a fast and reliable web connection - and a properly set up LAN. Since it's cloud, success is all in the plumbing. So it behoves you to pay extra for a higher bandwidth data plan and get some decent quality (i.e. non-consumer grade) networking hardware in place. You definitely want decent routers and switches if you're committing to a cloud solution for your business.

That said, one of my clients is using the usual Linksys cruft you can pick up at any Staples or OfficeMax - and it works just fine for their three person office. YMMV.

About the only hassle I ran into getting them set up was handling the cut-over for e-mail and DNS. That can get a little tricky if you don't understand what goes down when you do that. However, even if you don't, you can still manage to transition them very nicely provided you read the caveats and carefully follow the recommendations and instructions Microsoft provides.

In some respects. it's potentially more confusing for people who have been handling this stuff for years. Because the usual tools used to do it don't apply to Office365. You have learn (and use) the O365 admin interface. Microsoft has made it as simple as possible for a non-IT person to use. So much so that we "pros" sometimes get a little tripped up and confused because...well...it really can't be that easy, right?

Well guess what? It is.

1847

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 09:32 AM »

Thank you all. But I can't help thinking I post far too much.

1848

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 09:16 AM »

FWIW, on Gentoo I found it in the syslinux package.

-ewemoa (May 22, 2014, 07:06 AM)

Yes indeed. It's in Mint too, although I've heard it's not included in every distro's version of the syslinux package. Don't know why.

Looks like it's something worth looking into a little more too. Come see:



Huh! Build bootable EFI image??? Hmm...definitely want to play with this soon - with the verbose switch enabled. Like Tom Waite said: "What's he building in there? What's he building in there...."

1849

General Software Discussion / Re: Problem:1 cable modem 150/20 mbps & 1 fiber line 5/5mbps how to distribute best

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 09:03 AM »

The COX modem supplies a full duplex signal which cannot be handled by "ANY" modern unmanaged switch.  He said the switch would only allow the single sided connection which would drop the speed to 100Mbit.  Those were HIS terms exactly.

-questorfla (May 22, 2014, 02:29 AM)

  I can't even make words to respond to this with.

-Stoic Joker (May 22, 2014, 07:08 AM)

Man! When it comes to that cable 'tech', the problem's not how much he doesn't know. The problem's how much of what he DOES 'know' is completely wrong.  

1850

Non-Windows Software / Re: *NIX: Relatively Minimal Host OS for VirtualBox Use

« Last post by 40hz on May 22, 2014, 06:08 AM »

A further option appears to be to use Knoppix -- version 7.2 appears to come with a relatively recent version of VirtualBox (something in the 4.2.x series).

FWIW, I tried the following instructions for getting Knoppix on a USB stick with some success:

  http://www.wgdd.de/2013/08/create-knoppix-usb-boot-stick-from.html

-ewemoa (May 22, 2014, 04:21 AM)

 Thank you ewemoa!

Very nice! Normally I'd just use USB Image Writer or something similar. But it's always good to know a command line way to do something just in case the PC you're using doesn't have all you favorite tools installed.

I wasn't aware of that isohybrid command.

Learn something new almost every day when you're using Linux!