Recent Posts

6001

General Software Discussion / Re: How to remove Windows.old?

« Last post by 40hz on March 05, 2012, 10:43 AM »

I thought OEM disks from manufacturers like Dell could only be sold to their own customers for restoring their own factory built systems and had to be customised according to the terms of the OEM license precisely to stop them being installed on other hardware.

-Carol Haynes (March 05, 2012, 09:33 AM)

That's correct. There used to be ways of getting around the vendor's hardware lock. But it was always a hassle and generally not worth it. It's also become more difficult with each post XP SP2 version of Windows to do so. So I wouldn't be surprised if it's no longer possible.

Manufacturers are also getting a lot stricter about selling restoration OS DVDs. Almost all manufacturers now require serial numbers off the computer and user registration before they'll ship you one of their disks. No name/serial match? Sorry. No disks for you!

6002

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:56 PM »

Are we really hijacking a thread to play this game?

-Josh (March 04, 2012, 02:52 PM)

@Josh. Agree. PMs would be better...

I'm out. 

6003

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:47 PM »

Really? So you wish to assert that road warriors primarily use desktops?? ...I'd love to see you get one through airport security.  

-Stoic Joker (March 04, 2012, 02:32 PM)

More like the opposite: Traveling users use laptops, but laptops are not made for them. I don't travel much.

-Tuxman (March 04, 2012, 02:38 PM)

*Sigh* Laptops are designed for portability, e.g. travel. Just because you wish to sit there with one (defeating the/its purpose) doesn't alter the original intent of the design.

-Stoic Joker (March 04, 2012, 02:43 PM)

To which my GF would say: "Nuts."  

6004

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:36 PM »

And now they will fix this methinks...

-iphigenie (March 04, 2012, 01:58 PM)

O...I think we can count on that...

At the very lest, they'll give it some serious thought. That was Linus Torvalds who was ranting after all. And it's not like it's a fix so much as it's some default settings changes and a little massaging of user group assignments.

6005

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:20 PM »

someone new using linux this week

-Gwen7 (March 04, 2012, 02:08 PM)

That is to be seen, might be next week or even next year

-Ath (March 04, 2012, 02:12 PM)

oh that's good! :-))

-Gwen7 (March 04, 2012, 02:16 PM)

Matters not. I'm not the evangelist I used to be about this. And I never was much of one to begin with.

But figure it this way - whatever we ultimately do end up using ten years from now will bear little resemblance to what we're currently using. So my only real concern is that whatever we're using opens doors and possibilities for us, promotes innovation, and offers choice.

Beyond that I don't care what it's called or who makes it - although I do have my druthers. (I'm only human.)
-----

@Gwen7 - nice to see you back around. Not enough women participants IMO.

6006

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:14 PM »

@Gwen7 - more so than usual with this one. He'll run it into the ground before he lets it get the better of him if push come to shove. Can't claim any credit however. He already decided to give it a try on his own. I'm just putting my two cents in where I feel I have something to suggest.

 

6007

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 12:32 PM »

Just torch the unwind, and it'll probably run just fine.

-Stoic Joker (March 04, 2012, 12:21 PM)

+1. I've found that to be the case about half the time. (Heard it from a guy who works for HP so I guess they're aware of it too.)

What I hate is when the install aborts, the printer throws an error when you attempt to access properties, and subsequent invocations of the installer refuse to do anything (i.e. install, repair or remove). Then it's KB lookups and manual fix-it time. Nightmare.

And yes. I just saw my GF's new HP multi (consumer grade) install without a hitch last weekend. Much to my surprise. (Even if I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop.) So maybe they've finally gotten their act together on the consumer end? I always liked the big enterprise HPs. And the pro office stuff like the 4000 series, et al. I just never thought HP did good 'cheap' technology.

Maybe I'll have to check them out again and re-evaluate.  Depending.

6008

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 11:46 AM »

Compare to HP where driver packages are massive and are (at best) flaky on most models I have come across - requiring regular (and very time consuming removal and re-install .... never try their update system unless you like blue screens)

-Carol Haynes (March 04, 2012, 09:14 AM)

+1 x10^3 !!!!

The newest HP printer models with the wifi print capabilities have gotten marginally better with Windows7. Or have if you just accept the installation defaults and don't try to get fancy. But the multi-function units are still a nightmare IMO . Especially if your initial installation borks and is left in an incomplete or damaged state. Ripping out a botched HP multi-function install is a total nightmare.



Alerts like the one above make me sometimes wish I had become an actuary instead of doing what I do for a living.

(Hint: ALWAYS create a Windows restore point before installing any HP printer. Probably not a bad idea to do one prior to any other printer installation while you're at it.)

Canon's installer, on the other hand, works flawlessly almost every time. And that includes their multi-function units - which are the only multi-functions I'll (grudgingly) recommend to my clients.

When it comes to photo printing, for me it's either Canon or Epson - purely for their color quality and superb resolution. Completely blows the doors off HP in that department. And in practice, I prefer to print high quality color and photos using a Canon for most of the reasons Carol has mentioned previously.

Almost every graphic and photo pro I know thinks the same.

6009

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 11:23 AM »

Linus is right about openSUSE's general being messed up, at least.

-Tuxman (March 04, 2012, 10:01 AM)

Not really. It's a very nice distro. More polished than most in fact.

But it's also openly geared towards a business/corporate rather than a home/personal user. So it incorporates a lot of enterprise mindset. And it's default security settings reflect that mentality. (They can always be turned off BTW.)

Linus probably went with Suse because they've been long-time champions of the KDE desktop, and well known for their elegant implementation of same. KDE is something Linus has gone on record for preferring over Gnome, which he's called 'braindead' on more than one occasion.

Dunno. It's always weird (to me) to see somebody with Linus's technical acumen freaking out over something the average Linux user briefly grumbles about before they change some settings and get on with life. So Torvalds' comments smack just a bit of acting like a 'Rock Star' and silly posturing to me.

But who knows? Linus has been known to display a touch of temper at times. Maybe he was just having a bad day?

Still, he is a god... of sorts. Which means anything Linus Torvalds says is automatically "news."
 
Onward!  

6010

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 11:11 AM »

Doesn't Linux offer anything like that?

-Innuendo (March 04, 2012, 09:42 AM)

It does. You can.

Which is why I'm wondering where Linus-T is coming from with this.

6011

General Software Discussion / Re: Now YOU Can Be the Spyware! =D

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 08:03 AM »

The should see if they can recruit a bunch of Romania's ex-Securitate to administrate and run this for them. They wrote the book on near universal electronic monitoring of their citizens before Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime got booted out.

Why reinvent the wheel? If you want to move towards a totalitarian society, hire ex-totalitarian apparatchiks.

Global Village, right?

6012

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

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 07:13 AM »

The typos are by 40hz, then, mostly...

-Ath (March 04, 2012, 05:09 AM)

Of course. Have iPhone crappy spell checker will travail. 

6013

DC Gamer Club / Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Free!

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 03:14 AM »

Both look quite impressive!

Thanks for sharing

-ewemoa (March 04, 2012, 02:49 AM)

You're welcome.

Now if somebody would care to personally recommend a good modern strategic submarine/sub-warfare simulator (i.e. SSN/SSBN class - not WWII era), or a full naval warfare simulator with decent submarine coverage, I'd be more grateful than words could tell.

6014

DC Gamer Club / Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator - Free!

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 02:42 AM »

Thanks for sharing. I was wondering if if they were going to do something like that with FlightSim. As a long time owner (starting with the first) right up until "X" the last incarnation, I'm not exactly happy. I would have preferred them to bring it back as a packaged product. But this is better than nothing I suppose.

And so much for the hopeful rumors that were circulating that Microsoft was going to either open source it - or just release it for free. (I never believed those rumors for a minute. Microsoft doesn't do things like that.)

Also check out FlightGear - the free open source multiplatform flight sim! Here's a preview from version 2.4:

Note: version 2.6.0 has just been released.

And if you're bored flying around Earth, check out Orbiter 2010 Space Flight Simulator. Does for space what FlightGear does for "atmo."  (Windows only - sorry Linux & Mac people!)

 

6015

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 04, 2012, 01:42 AM »

Also, my network wifi connection is really flaky...do I need drivers?

-superboyac (March 04, 2012, 12:01 AM)

If you've just installed, run an update. Odds are pretty good there's updates available. If there are, half the time whatever you're running into will be fixed by one of them. Mint's good about that.

Next, can you be a little more specific as to what constitutes "flaky"? Connections dropping? Slow speeds? Trouble authenticating or getting DHCP address from router. etc..

Also do you know make/model of the wifi card in the laptop. You'll need that info. Ideally the manufacturer's website can tell you that so there's no guessing. If not, you can probe, but all that will tell you is what Mint thinks it is. If it's misidentified the card, that could cause problems.

Toughbooks also have some weird implementations of power management because there's no fan IIRC. (Magnesium case is supposed to be a big heat sink right?) Check the power management settings. For laptop wifi it's usually better to switch off the wifi card when you don't need it rather than have smart  power management try to guess when it's not needed. That can also make the wifi NIC appear to be flaky.
 

6016

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

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 10:17 PM »

Carol hits 7000!
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Stoic Joker (March 03, 2012, 07:10 PM)

Bravo! She doesn't look a post over 5000...

Congratulations Carol on 6000 most excellent and well-written posts. (With nary a typo to been seen anywhere! Amazing!)  

6017

Living Room / Re: Amazon pulls thousands of e-books... and the SFWA strikes back

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 10:11 PM »

What is the effect of it though?
Presumably you can buy any book title you want in the US, but just not those from certain publishers?

-IainB (March 03, 2012, 03:36 PM)

In Penguin's case IIRC they had a separate company which handled US distribution and registered their copyrights for the US. That was to make it easier (i.e. U.S. incorporated subsidiary in a US court) to handle legalities. I don't think it ever had anything to do with banning or regulating what got read here. It as just a "business thing." Much like the region settings for DVDs. Who knows? Maybe they got better legal protections doing it that way since international business wasn't as commonplace back then as it is now.

6018

General Software Discussion / Re: Linus Torvalds on OpenSUSE

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 12:50 PM »

Linus Torvaldes is apparently much more knowledgeable about the Linux (i.e. kernal) part of the GNU/Linux equation than he is about the GNU (userland/userspace) part.

C'mon Linus, really? Having to enter a password one time too often got you so bent out of shape that you had to walk away from a distro? Just elevate your user level and be done with it. Or set the admin password to a single space character so you can hit <SPACE><ENTER> any time it asks for one.

Sheesh!

6019

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 12:22 PM »

Sadly that compatibility page still reflects my experiences of every time I have tried Linux - the best I can hope for is a crappy piece of software that I have to purchase to get substandard printout or use a basic BubbleJet emulator - both of which mean I lose almost all none basic print functionality.

-Carol Haynes (March 03, 2012, 10:49 AM)

Might be easier to throw in the towel on that Canon and get a printer that either uses PS/PCL - or has all its "smarts" running on the printer rather than on the host computer just to be done with it.

I find I'm having less and less patience with trying to get something not designed or ever intended to be used with anything other than Windows to work. Especially if it turns into too much of a hassle.



But it's not Linux's fault it won't work. Nor is it the manufacturers. Because they did say it was for Windows with no mention anywhere of Linux support. If we get burned on that, it's our own hubris to blame. (Linux does encourage us to believe we can do anything.)

Where I do get annoyed is when something originally did have Linux support, but dropped it later. HP used to be pretty good at doing that.

6020

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 8 to offer nine versions for sale

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 11:53 AM »

If you want to talk about confusion due to too many versions, let's discuss how many Linux distros are out there.

-Innuendo (March 03, 2012, 10:18 AM)

Nope! Apples and oranges. Not a valid analogy.  

Most distros only differ in the default settings chosen, the kernal version, and which software gets included in the standard installation package. ALL distros are capable of running any GNU/Linux software and supporting any feature found in any other distro. The differences are therefore mainly cosmetic.

Different SKUs and versions represent different capabilities in Windows. Anything below the current Ultimate or Enterprise edition represents a version of Windows with an increasingly reduced or disabled feature set.

Differences in distros are examples of differing personal preferences in an OS and desktop environment. Differences in Windows versions are manifestations of a granular pricing strategy on the part of Microsoft.
 

But to your point, yes...there probably are far too many distros out there!

6021

Living Room / Re: Scroogle R.I.P.

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 11:40 AM »

how is a DOS attack and the lack of a viable business model Google's fault exactly? I'm no google fan by far but they are not running a charity and cannot be expected to.

-iphigenie (March 03, 2012, 10:36 AM)

I think that hits the nail on the head. And I'm no fan of Google either.

I think it's also important to note that Daniel Brandt takes pains to not associate the DDOS attacks his sites were receiving with Google's decision to make API changes that would prevent Scroogle from working the way it did.

Considering how quickly he pulled all his sites offline, I personally think he has a much better idea of what the DDOS attacks were about than he's letting on - and has pulled his domains  offline for more than the 'official' reason he gave for doing so:

I no longer have any domains online. I also took all my domains out of DNS because I want to signal to the criminal element that I have no more servers to trash. This hopefully will ward off further attacks on my previous providers.

Seriously, if you're getting hit with a coordinated and well-orchestrated DDOS against all your domains, I find it pretty hard to believe you have absolutely no clue as to why it may be happening.

I could be wrong about that, but his statement just strikes me as weird.

6022

Living Room / Re: Anyone else noticed this?

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 11:34 AM »

In the end, I told him to add a message on his site, that says it is best viewed in ANYTHING other than Firefox.

-Stephen66515 (March 03, 2012, 11:20 AM)

Agree. I find myself using Opera more and more.

6023

Living Room / Re: Scroogle R.I.P.

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 09:56 AM »

I think Scroogle learned the hard way that it's not a good idea to plan a product or service that's completely dependent on somebody else's forbearance or permission.

Much like the only server you can really trust and depend on is the one you own yourself, so too a search engine.


Sorry to see Scroogle go. But I think we all expected it would eventually happen this way.

6024

Living Room / Re: Amazon pulls thousands of e-books... and the SFWA strikes back

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 07:59 AM »

PResumably if it is not in the public domain in the US then you can't sell it as though it was - which seems fair enough.

Sooner or later someone will have to sort out the broken copyright laws - we live in a global marketplace now and one set of agreed rules should apply. It would be good to have a new set of rules drawn up - preferably without US media interests being the dominant force!

-Carol Haynes (March 03, 2012, 05:50 AM)

We do need a rational, fair, and unified international copyright law. Desperately.

But I think we'll see cheap and abundant fusion energy deployed globally, war abolished, and hunger and disease completely eliminated before we see a copyright law like that.

6025

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by 40hz on March 03, 2012, 07:49 AM »

In the end, I think the ultimate success of a project like this is dependent on two factors

1. Just how much and where you'll need to maintain a presence in the Windows landscape.

Simple truth is that transitioning to Linux is not purely a philosophical or political decision. There are practicalities to consider because available technology is also a key factor. If there's something that's Windows-only, you're always going to need to maintain a presence in Bill Gate's world. Same goes if you need to interface with other people who are exclusively Windows-based users. We are not islands.

If I only had to deal with my own requirements, I could easily move 98% of my computing and online life to Linux and not even blink. What little Windows I'd need to keep would be purely because there will always be apps (that will only run on Windows - or very inefficiently under emulation) I'd be reluctant to live without.

But because I have friends/family who look to me for tech advice and support - and a business that needs to interface with a much larger world - my actual day-to-day split is closer to 60% Nix to 40% Windows. (This ratio varies. But even under "ideal" circumstances, Windows always seems to require at least 15% of my computing space.)

So what does this mean? Simple. When I'm doing my "own thing" I'm almost always doing it exclusively under Linux. When I'm doing everything else, I'm at least 75% Windows no matter what.

I've since learned not to worry about it too much. I'm not into the politics. All I ask is that my personal systems "do" for me the way I want things done. As long as I've got my personal productivity space working that way, I'm happy.

2. The degree of sheer bloodymindeness you're willing to bring to the table.

Almost anything can be made to work with a sufficient investment of creativity, time, and hammer bashing. The real question is how much of that is worth it.

I don't know of any hard and fast rule for dealing with that. Once in a while I'll get my nose out of joint about not being able to do something. I'll then invest a ridiculous amount of effort into getting around it. But I've noticed it happens less and less often of late. Maybe it has something to do with me mellowing out a bit. Most likely it's more to do with me maintaining a dual-boot machine as my main desktop.

Hear ye the words of a great sage:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."
  --  W.C. Fields