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4851

Living Room / Re: Remember to make full drive image backups

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 04:25 PM »

Thanks for the link - trying to diagnose a friend's royally messed-up laptop... I'm wagering hardware fault, it's either that or some really nasty malware.

-f0dder (October 15, 2012, 12:15 PM)

FWIW, I have an old PC dubbed Sydney Cove that sports a very stripped down version of Windows and is loaded with every form of malware scanner I could put my hands on. It's never connected to my internal network. (Most times I leave its NIC unplugged.) I use it to scan and disinfect suspect and severely infected Windows HDs when all else fails to root out the problem. Just pull the drive from its PC, mount it on SC, and "Bob's yer uncle."

It has yet to fail although sometimes it only results in my being able to safely salvage the user's data since some malware occasionally damages Windows enough it becomes unbootable after the scrubbing.

Right now I just nuke and then reimage Sydney Cove's drive after each use to remain as safe as possible.

I was tempted to implement it as a virtual machine, but haven't gotten around to it. And in the wake of some new nastiness that can affect virtual machines I think I may just keep it on hardware for the time being.

YMMV  

4852

Living Room / Re: What A Different World Than What I Grew Up In :(

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 03:55 PM »

If something good came from it, like an arrest and conviction, that would be an acceptable resolution.

-app103 (October 16, 2012, 12:59 PM)

I think you're seeing "the street" respond because there very likely won't be any resolution from the authorities on this one unless there's an ambitious DA somewhere in the loop.

We need to consider that an arrest or conviction will never occur because there really isn't any criminal law that directly applies to what happened. Maybe a prosecutor could make a case under some legal theory or another to extrapolate from an existing law. But that would be a fairly big legal stretch. And it would require a pretty broadminded judge who didn't have a problem "legislating from the bench" as they say. Not that it would matter since convictions of that sort almost always get overturned or reduced on appeal.

AFAIK, there is no law that says it's a crime to do or say something which results in another person committing suicide. Especially since suicide is generally viewed as a form of mental illness anyway. The family could sue for damages perhaps. But the simple truth is, unless you personally caused virtually all of the pain, and the person ended up killing themselves as a result, there's no direct cause and effect sufficient to be prosecuted. Saying something that exposed somebody to contempt or ridicule might have been considered slanderous. But that's a tort, not a criminal offense.

So in the absence of a specific law or an official action there's always the American tradition of taking the law into your own hands to address a grievance and/or right a wrong. I think this is just one more manifestation of it. Not to say I agree that bringing "Judge Lynch" in on this is the way to handle it. But I do think this is one of those situations where people have reached the point where they're saying "enough is enough." So some of the the more extreme examples of public reaction can hardly be considered surprising in this instance.

 

4853

Living Room / Re: What A Different World Than What I Grew Up In :(

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 03:32 PM »

and two wrongs never make a right.

Nope. But three lefts do!

-40hz (October 16, 2012, 12:12 PM)

I had a feeling someone was going to say that.  

-app103 (October 16, 2012, 12:59 PM)

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

I figured injecting a little lightheartedness right about then would be beneficial.

4854

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 03:26 PM »

Legal and regulated properly would leave far less casualties.

-Stoic Joker (October 16, 2012, 01:47 PM)

@SJ - Sounds more like a conclusion masquerading as a premise to me, but ok

Bad yes.  Reprehensible yes.  Evil?  Well, we have a different definition of that.  I leave that to the people who do more than troll on the internet.  But the differences in definition are fine.  But when someone says that the people that shot the Pakistani girl were evil and you lump him in with it... well, you have too wide a spectrum there in my opinion.

Really? Spend some time carefully examining and contemplating the concept of evil and you might come away with a very different understanding. Seriously. 

Use of certain words in hyperbole IMO reduces the effectiveness of them when they are accurately used.  Racism, bigotry, homophobia, rape... they are used too commonly now, which water the terms down.  And IMO, this is a prime example of hyperbole.

Wraith, my good man, you know I think the world of you. But I don't understand where you're coming from with the above. But so be it. If you can't see (or won't allow yourself to see) the difference between what is commonly considered 'trolling' and what this guy has been doing...well...I'll leave you to ponder effectiveness and accuracy of definition to your heart's content.

For my part, I'll just sit back and smile a little smile, knowing somebody finally belled this particular cat.

-----------------------------
Note: Did you mean Use of certain words in exaggeration rather than hyperbole? Because I think you might be misusing the word "hyperbole" in the above. Hyperbole is done with the conscious effort to exaggerate rather than persuade - and is not presented with the intent that it to be taken literally. At least from my understanding of the definition.  

4855

Living Room / Re: Tracking Brainwaves to Protect Our Borders

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 12:53 PM »

t's the fault of the business owners that choose to pay an illegal wage, figuring that illegals will work for whatever they can get and won't mind being cheated. It is the fault of business owners that decide to only hire illegals, when people like my husband can't find a job...not the fault of the illegals they choose to hire. They do it to pay lower wages. They do it to avoid paying employment taxes. They do it to avoid paying Social Security/unemployment/disability taxes. They do it to avoid providing health insurance to their workers.

-app103 (October 16, 2012, 12:35 PM)

THAT is what you need to stop. Forget border patrolling. Concentrate your efforts on the businesses that make this country attractive to come to illegally. The businesses that cause there to be more Americans on welfare because they can't find jobs, jobs that if they paid legal wages and hired Americans, would pay more than welfare does.

-app103 (October 16, 2012, 12:35 PM)

Thank you April! A small voice arguing for sane and moral thinking in an insane and immoral world.

Sad thing is that most human societies demonstrate a disturbing tendency to adopt as their social norms what they do to their most helpless and powerless members. What we do to those who can't defend themselves eventually becomes what gets done to all of us.

In this case, it will ultimately end up lowering the working conditions and expectations of the entire US workforce. And all it will take is to arrange for the legal citizenry to become a bit more desperate for work (any work) then they currently are - and what we used to think of as the "third world" will soon become our world.

Like the old saying goes: What price 'dignity' when your belly's empty?

4856

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 12:28 PM »

anyone as is consenting

-Stoic Joker (October 16, 2012, 12:04 PM)

Agree up to a point. But then there's the issue of what you'd consider "consent."

"I think you're really hot and I'd like to go to bed with you!" is pretty clearly consensual.

But so is: "Ok. I'll do ya for $50 instead of $75 - but only because if I don't come back with enough money tonight, my Man is gonna beat the living hell out of me again." It's just a different form of 'consent.'

So too with a runaway fourteen year old who is thinking: "If I don't wanna turn tricks anymore they said I can go back living out on the street anytime I want to. So maybe this ain't so bad compared to the street."

Gotta be careful with arguments defending prostitution in the USA.

I was involved in a crisis call center at one point in my career. Got an earful enough to last a lifetime. And trust me, while there may well be thousands of "high-class call girls" and "sly-boys" out there who "love" their job, there's easily ten times that many homeless, brutalized, blackmailed, and drug-addicted prostitutes on the payroll of your average "procurer" or "madam."

It's an ugly business. Until you see up close how it actually operates, you have no idea just how ugly it can be.

4857

Living Room / Re: What A Different World Than What I Grew Up In :(

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 12:12 PM »

osting the personal info of a bully only encourages more bullying.

Strongly disagree based on my experience.

Bullying flourishes in the shadows. I don't think it's ever wise to allow them to operate anonymously or unchallenged. Exposing them for what they are, and exposing what they do to as many people as possible, is the first step in dealing with the problem - even if it serves no other function than forcing those in a position of authority to take action. Because believe me, schools would rather not deal with the issue at all from what I've seen. And anything they can do to "not see" the problem has been their SOP so far - even with all the publicity and hysteria being generated by this most recent cause célèbre.

Sometimes the only way to deal with an intermittent problem is to watch it (or push it) until it finally reveals itself. Once the problem is clearly identified, you can then work on finding a more permanent fix.

Exposing a bully does exactly that.

and two wrongs never make a right.

Nope. But three lefts do!

4858

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« Last post by 40hz on October 16, 2012, 11:49 AM »

BTW: I don't see where the term "witch hunt" has any applicability here.

A witch hunt is when people go out and look for somebody (anybody) they can hang a label on by extension and then burn it.

This guy burned himself. He displayed reprehensible behavior and caused a lot of pain for no reason other than the simple pleasure of pushing buttons and watching people squirm. And he did it in a cowardly manner by hiding behind a mask - and then counting on the occasionally warped morality of the web (which says: It's all good.) to protect himself.

Sorry. Doing what this person did is plain evil. And like most things truly evil, it's amazing how utterly pointless and banal it is in its practice and intent.

Funny how, according to some people,  you have the god-given right to inflict as much pain and mayhem as you want to with impunity - and anyone who says otherwise is a bigot, a statist, a fascist, or any of the other labels the techno-hipster crowd is fond of slapping on anyone who dares ask "Should we really be putting up with this sort of thing?"

Perhaps it has something to do with upbringing?

Oh well...the Reddit spin doctors are out in full swing trying to build a case for how this individual is actually a very nice guy and didn't actually mean to cause all the suffering and annoyance he did. It was just done in fun - and screw you if you can't take a joke. Besides, all these dumb chicks were asking for it anyway, right?

Yup...that's the age old macho-male argument anytime one of their number is called to book for acting like a yahoo.

Like I said...must have something to do with upbringing.

4859

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 09:27 PM »

^Yes you did!  

Can't wait to see how many otherwise intelligent people in the web community end up making total asses and hypocrites out of themselves attempting to defend this moron.

I do find it amusing how so many in the web community claim to be defenders of free "give & take" and have a "let the fur fly" philosophy until somebody points the same gun at them. Almost like the old joke about how to turn a diehard conservative into a screaming liberal - just have the police stop one of them at 2:00am for a bogus traffic violation with no witnesses around to testify about what really happened shortly afterwards.

I'm waiting to see how long it takes before that "hang tough and screw you" response he's offering starts to fray. I give it about six weeks since the more that comes out about this guy, the worse it looks for anybody standing behind him. And I'm sure we'll hear plenty fairly shortly. Before it's done, this guy is going to become the poster child for everything that's wrong with allowing an open and virtually unregulated Internet.

Really sad part is that Reddit, by some of its recent behavior in this incident, is falling right onto the trap set by those who are arguing for greater legal restrictions on web activities and usage. Hard to argue for the sufficiency of self regulation and policing when it appears a surprisingly large group of savvy and vocal webmins are giving Brutsch's type of behavior their tacit approval.

Only a matter of time before some politicos start asking the old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?. And reach the inevitable conclusion that some new custodes are now required - and preferably be on the judicial branch's payroll.

4860

Living Room / Re: Tracking Brainwaves to Protect Our Borders

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 09:00 PM »

Ever wonder what it would be like if the person who you are talking to could suddenly read your true thoughts? I know I have

-Tinman57 (October 15, 2012, 08:23 PM)

We know you have too!

4861

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 03:31 PM »

An utterly psychotic performance of an utterly psychotic (and her best IMO) song. Here's a young Alanis Morrisette doing You Ought to Know live at the Nulles Part Ailleurs in 1995.

Then there's this oddly hypnotic piece by Beth Orton called She Cries Your Name. Not much of a video, although Beth is certainly cute in a scruffy tom-boyish sort of way in this number - even if I haven't a clue what the video has to do with the song. But the song is very interesting. A haunting melody with some excellent acoustic guitar work (maybe with a tiny hint of Kaki King in places) and some superb jazz flute stylings. Almost Joni Mitchell-like to my ears. If you're like me, it grows on you with repeated listening.

And since I mentioned Kaki King, this is an example of some of the avant-garde things she plays. This is Playing with Pink Noise - the piece that put her on the map - and took an innocent Ovation Adamas guitar (now sold as the Kaki King signature model) places never dreamed of by it's creators.

4862

Living Room / Re: Why Can't Germans Say 'Squirrel' ?

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 03:22 PM »

[I refuse to make a video of myself doing making any of these sounds :p]

-tomos (October 11, 2012, 03:50 AM)

Friends don't video non-native speaking friends attempting to pronounce Germanic umlauts.

It's not a pretty sight.

4863

General Software Discussion / Re: database program needed (CRM?)

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 03:06 PM »

Let me think about about it overnight. I want to run a few questions past some of my clients who are big CRM users.

If he's going to be doing email marketing he might want to look at MailChimp.
(Unfortunately not in German either.) It's a hosted solution that has everything you'd ever need to do direct email campaigns - and there's a "forever free" version that is pretty robust. I'd definitely check it out. Especially if he does a newsletter or a lot of email. Has some interesting CRM-type mail features in it - although I wouldn't call it a CRM. They have a guide for international users that explains what it's about. Get it here.

4864

Living Room / Re: 3D Printing Under Attack

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 12:41 PM »

How about printing a plastic 38 revolver, and using a steel cylinder.

-Stoic Joker (October 15, 2012, 11:38 AM)

Anything that has a barrel and some kind of receiver durable enough that it won't blow up in your hand when you fired it would do.

And if it's only a one-shot (or disposable) that shouldn't be too hard considering the number of improvised (but deadly firearms) that can be fabricated even without a fancy 3D printer. A quick Google will net you dozens of designs - so it's not as if 3D printing brought a new capability to the table. It just promises to make it easier for the technically challenged - and possibly spawn a bigger US 'cottage' armament industry.

Not that you even need for it to be a traditional firearm. There are lots of other projectile weapons that don't depend on a charge to do their work. Although the phrase "zip gun" has gone out of vogue, it hasn't removed them from the street. ANd with some of the new materials they're being made from, they've gotten a lot deadlier.. A friend of mine who is with our State Police showed me a homebrew "gun" that could punch a triangular wedge of sharpened scrap metal through a half-inch piece of solid core plywood at 10 yards. With no flash and hardly any sound either - so it doesn't need a silencer or muzzle flash arrestor for 'stealth' use. This was the real deal - a genuine man-killer - and one nasty piece of hardware. Even had a pretty little silver cross amateurishly embedded in the grip.

The only thing that caused a drop in the zip gun's market share was the influx of dirt cheap "real guns" which started appearing (in the US) in earnest during the 80s.

Sad truth is, weapons acquisition is driven by a need - real or perceived - to have a fallback in an emergency.

The only way they're ever going to get a handle the number of guns on the street is if the powers that be finally start addressing the root causes behind it. Most people I know prefer not to own or carry a gun. But I'm seeing and hearing of more and more people who used to be adamantly opposed to "having a weapon in the house" now seriously considering getting one and learning how to use it.

Maybe the time has come to drop the glittering generalities and propaganda and start some genuine dialog about why this is happening?

Hello? Washington? State Governments? Is there anybody out there?

4865

Living Room / List of 50 Free Courses Granting Certificates from Great Universities

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 12:04 PM »

Fight the dumbing-down of public education!

Get yourself enrolled in one of these courses and keep the "little gray cells" busy.

From Open Culture (a must bookmark website if there ever was one) comes this:

Introducing a List of 50 Free Courses Granting Certificates from Great Universities
 October 15th, 2012

Earlier this year we began telling you about a potential revolution in education — the birth of MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. As explained above, these courses let students, thousands at a time, take courses from great universities for free online. What’s more, most of these courses offer students a credential — something like a certificate of completion — if they master the material covered in the class. Some of the MOOC providers are well known: Coursera, Udacity, and edX. Others, like Class2Go, Google Course Builder and Venture Lab, are just emerging. But, together, they’re producing courses at breakneck speed, and we thought it was time to start organizing a list for you.

Today, we’re rolling out a list of 50 Free Courses Granting Certificates from Great Universities. The list organizes courses chronologically by start date, and it indicates the kind of credential the courses offer — for example, Certificates of Completion, Statements of Accomplishment, or Certificates of Mastery. The list, which happens to include another 25 courses not bearing certificates, will be regularly updated. You can expect it to grow rapidly, and you can always access it by clicking Certificate Courses in the top navigation of our web site. Below we have listed a number of online courses starting this week:

    Finance - Stanford on Venture Lab – October 15 (10 weeks)
    Introduction to Computer Science - Harvard on edX – October 15 (24 weeks)
    Startup Boards: Advanced Entrepreneurship - Stanford on Venture Lab – October 15 (9 weeks)
    Designing a New Learning Environment - Stanford on Venture Lab – October 15 (9 weeks)
    Technology Entrepreneurship - Stanford on Venture Lab – October 15 (9 weeks)
    Experimental Genome Science - Duke on Coursera – October 15 (12 weeks)
    A Crash Course on Creativity - Stanford on Venture Lab - October 17 (10 weeks)

Get the full list here. It includes 75 Massive Open Courses in total.

Find the article and links here.

Some of these will probably be familiar to many of you. But a few were new to me. (Note:  I highly recommend Udacity's courses btw!)

Do it for yourself! Take a course.

---------------
P.S. Be sure to add OpenCulture.com to your feed reader - or sign up for their daily newsletter. Barely a day goes by when there aren't at least two articles in it that send me scurrying down the rabbit hole. Makes for a great lunch break!

4866

Living Room / Re: How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple’s Secret Employee Training Manual

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 11:55 AM »

^My fault. If I hadn't tried to be funny with the title you probably would have spotted it.    (And more people might have read it too!)

4867

Living Room / Re: Raspberry Pi model B now delivered with 512 MB, at same price

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 11:31 AM »

 

4868

Living Room / Re: How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple’s Secret Employee Training Manual

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 10:19 AM »

Reminds me of some of the stuff the the Scientologists put out.

4869

Living Room / Re: Remember to make full drive image backups

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 10:08 AM »

Also add a "live" bootable Linux CD/DVD (or USB key) to the toolkit.

You don't need one of the "system rescue" distros either. Anything with a a Gnome desktop (to make things easy for a Windows users) will do.

When Windows flat out refuses to boot, juts pop in the CD/DVD/USB key, boot from that, and move your files over to an external drive.

Far from ideal - but at least you'll be able to copy your data off the harddrive without too much of a hassle prior to reformatting and reinstalling Windows.

Sometimes when things go completely south and your images and backups aren't working (for whatever reason) this is your only alternative.

4870

General Software Discussion / Re: database program needed (CRM?)

« Last post by 40hz on October 15, 2012, 07:48 AM »

Couple of questions:

• How much time is he willing to commit to learning a software package? Most CRM software takes some training, along with forming new personal work habits.
• Is it just for him - or for his entire company?
• Does he need to have access to his data from anywhere?
• What's the primary goal for him? Generating leads? Maintaining extensive contact data and call histories? Etc...
• Does he have a budget for this?

Knowing some of this would give us a better idea of what to suggest. CRM apps take many forms. And different products  place their emphasis on different management goals. So it's usually good idea to be as specific as possible about what you really want/need it for.
 

Contro mentioned Goldmine. If his needs are for a solid basic relationship management system, Goldmine has been around for years. I have a few clients using it, and they are quite happy with what it does for them. They offer a free trial so it wouldn't cost him anything to check it out and see if it fits the bill. There's plenty of good info on the Goldmine site. The case studies provide a good idea of what something like Goldmine can do.

4871

Living Room / Re: Remember to make full drive image backups

« Last post by 40hz on October 14, 2012, 06:37 PM »

One of the things I like about Paragon is that you can 'mount' the images as read only drives and recover individual files and folders using normal Explorer methods. This can be handy - but I take your point that file backups are best done with appropriate tools.

-Carol Haynes (October 14, 2012, 06:10 PM)

Oh I agree with you. It does sound very handy. But it still makes me nervous since it's one more thing that can break. And Murphy's presence is inescapable in our line of business.

I used to like that feature in Acronis but have given up using their bloated bugfest sometime ago when they caused me a lot of embarrassment with clients having recommended their tools.

-Carol Haynes (October 14, 2012, 06:10 PM)

Makes two of us. I actually ended up buying back several copies from clients I had recommended it to.  Something that caught me by surprise since TrueImage had worked very reliably up until version 8 based on my experiences.

4872

Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.

« Last post by 40hz on October 14, 2012, 06:28 PM »

I don't disagree that someone might *try*, but as long as (a) the photos are not in the child pornography range and (b) they were obtained from the sources he says (facebook, twitter, etc), then it's not going to fly.  From my understanding, they were sexualized, but not explicit.  And considering what I see on facebook, twitter, and even at malls, that's not going to hold up

-wraith808 (October 14, 2012, 03:11 PM)

Depends on where it goes to court if it eventually does. Some states are more "right-thinking" and "right leaning" so he'd have a better chance there. But just because a photo was obtained from Twitter or wherever is no guarantee that it was put up there with the subject's consent. He'd be co-liable in any event. Then there's copyright and privacy issues since I doubt he ever bothered obtaining written releases for any of it - especially from a parent or guardian in the event it was a minor in the picture.

Of course Reddit stands to get burnt a bit too. But I really can't feel sorry for them. And their spiel about allowing this animal to continue what he was doing in the name of protecting a contributor's privacy and providing a safe haven for discussion rings just a bit hollow to my ears. But I'm of the "if you ain't part of the solution you're part of the problem" school of thought when it comes to social issues like this one.

I personally hope Reddit gets their all too smug butt kicked royally for dancing with this troll as much as they did. Funny how they finally came to realize he was about to become a liability once it became obvious somebody was onto him. Because they sure ditched him shortly before the story broke. So I assume he tried to cry on Reddit's shoulders about it before it went live.

Nope. This story isn't finished yet. What's gone down so far isn't even the opening act.

4873

Living Room / Re: The Next "They Live" - "Branded"

« Last post by 40hz on October 14, 2012, 06:02 PM »

Thanks for mentioning Branded. Wouldn't have heard about it otherwise. Will watch it this week.

(Sunglasses scene in They Live might just be the most profound few minutes I've seen in a movie. Well, nothing else springs to mind right at this moment.)

-nudone (October 14, 2012, 03:57 PM)

How about the scene towards the end when the character Ivy Walker climbs over the wall in M.N. Shyamalan's The Village?  

4874

Living Room / Re: Remember to make full drive image backups

« Last post by 40hz on October 14, 2012, 05:35 PM »

Partition level back tools are somewhat unreliable

-NigelH (October 14, 2012, 02:46 PM)

???

Beside Acronis TrueImage's problems a while ago, is there another one you had in mind?

- even if they offer file level recovery from their image backups.

Why would they want to offer file level recovery from a partition image? That's what a traditional backup or sync utility is for. Or going with realtime drive mirroring. Extracting individual files from an image sounds like a good way to risk damaging the integrity of the image.

I was always under the impression that disk and partition images were intended to be used for "all or nothing" recoveries. Did somebody try to create a hybrid?

4875

Living Room / Re: Remember to make full drive image backups

« Last post by 40hz on October 14, 2012, 02:14 PM »

+1 x 10^24!

What we suggest to our non-techy clients for their personal machines:

1. Set up your PC with at least 2 partitions C & D.

2. Put your OS and programs on C

3. Move your MyDocuments folder to D

4. Make a habit of saving all your data to folders on the D drive if you don't like the using the MyDocuments folder for everything.

5. Download a copy of Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Install it and follow the directions for making a rescue CD. Make at least two copies. Store the disks in a safe place.

6. Use Macrium to copy the C (system) partition to an external drive either bi-weekly - or after any major system upgrade or new program installation. Keep the two most recent copies.

7. Use Macrium to copy the D (data) partition to an external drive at least once per week - although daily or every other day would be best. Just kick it off when you're done for the day and walk away. Keep your two or three most recent copies.

8. Stop worrying.

 

Note: this is far from ideal from an efficiency viewpoint. But it's as close to "no-brainer" as we can make it. Fortunately, once set up, it's easy enough for the most technophobic user to handle and understand.