Posts by snowweb 34 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2013
Well said. I was wondering why people here seem to be asking themselves how to continue to wrestle with Windows to make it play ball.
Personally, if a company or product I do business with or buy doesn't play ball, then I don't use them or it anymore. Period. Stop wrestling with or trying to fix Windows. If it doesn't do what you want, stop living in denial. Admit it and find an alternative that does.
Don't forget that you can always run a VM with Windows in for the odd occasion that you need to access something which was archived in a Windows format. I wouldn't suggest using this to continue using your legacy programs productively though, just for access to archived data.
I was using the The Bat for years until 2010 when I moved entirely to Ubuntu and couldn't use it anymore.
The way I overcame this loss of a decent program, was by using Thunderbird, with a bunch of addons to make it more powerful.
I had tens of thousands of emails in The Bat which I needed to port, so what I did was I set up an IMAP mail server under my control. Made myself an account on it and setup access to it through The Bat. I then dragged (using The Bat UI) all the mail that I wanted to keep, into the IMAP folders (which in my case were actually hosted locally). This got my mail out of The Bat's proprietory storage format and into standard maildir format. I then backed up the IMAP storage location. Reformatted the computer with Ubuntu, setup another local Dovecot IMAP server and restored my backed up IMAP mail to it.
I could then setup Thunderbird, using the local IMAP server as my local folders and that would be where I would archive my mail forever more. This means that I will never be bound by proprietary formats ever again.
That was 5 years ago. Today, I love linux. I could never go back. There is nothing about windows I miss, except perhaps, support of some peripherals, but that's improving all the time. I still print, use webcam with Skype (sorry), scan, connect my mobile and open MS formats. I don't have anivirus software and don't need it. My passwords are stored locally in a KDE Wallet and I'm confident that all is secure.
In short, I can sleep at night. Good luck with your migration. You're in for a treat. :-)
But are the drivers open source? They make drivers for their desktop and laptop GPU's but they're all closed source. If you don't trust them, your only alternative is to use the non-proprietary driver from the community, with shaky 3D support and loss of certain features.
If they really want to be accepted by the Linux community, they should go the whole-hog and invite community participation in producing open source drivers.
They say you can turn of the offending "features", but how do we know that doing that, does actually turn of those items? I wouldn't mind betting, that those settings are just there for eye candy and they actually have no effect.
I think someone needs to set up a Windows 10 machine, turn off those settings and then analyse every packet sent, to identify it's content, purpose and destination.
Even if they are right (which I doubt), what relevance does this have for the average citizen which has and is paying for such non-sense research?
Don't the US Government have anything better to spend their tax payer's very hard earned cash on?
From the US controlling the internet and abusing that position, to control being passed to a global body comprised of governments of every country, who will then collude together to build the biggest ever data collection program known to man. It will dwarf the NSA.
Need somehow to find a way to ensure that any new controlling body, is comprised of standard internet community citizens with no government or significant commercial representation.
If the data is still around, then I'm sure the NSA have dissected it already, with, or without Levison's permission and whether he admits it or not.
I'm also confident that the whole scenario of giving a few days to get access to the data is purely a trap, to trap those whom the NSA have identified as interesting targets from analysing the data, They will be monitoring the server logs to track the connection IP's of those silly enough to fall for it. They'll also be running extra tor exit nodes.
I think probably, the world believed that Levison had deleted EVERYTHING at the moment he dissolved the company (including backups) and securely wiped the blank space afterwards. If indeed he didn't, then he's gone down in my opinion, for not doing so. However, he might have done that and this is all bluffing by the NSA to get users to connect one last time!
If I believed the "interesting targets" were real criminals, I might be pleased, but the trouble is, they seem to be more interested in political rivals, unfriendly governments, whistle blowers & corporate espionage!
Maybe if they had not been wasting such vast sums on paying 20,0000+ skilled personnel to do nothing of any benefit to the normal American citizen, for the last 55 years (and on other similarly degenerate programs, such as NSA and unwarranted military aggression), they would be in a very good financial position, instead of the dia-straits they're in now!
What goes around - comes around!
So does this mean that my USB scanner, which gets it's power to power the sheet-feeder motor from USB and has no independent power source, would be able to obtain it's power wirelessly?
If so, it sounds like just what the doctor ordered. If not, then it's looses it's appeal, since I currently enjoy the fact that my mobile is charged while connected to my laptop by USB.
It seems to me that the NSA would only need to ask nicely for the data. A court order is probably not necessary.
For me at least, SSL encryption while in transit and encrypted storage is not sufficient protection, since Google still have full access to whether they decide to decrypt and disclose it.
US companies have proven that they can not be trusted with our data. I will no longer store anything in the US or use US service providers in any way.
Seriously, what more do we need to hear, from this unrepentant, immoral bullying government?
I've read many of their published statements on the snooping issue and can honestly say that I've yet to hear any even slightly mitigating comment or statement making their actions justifiable.
Neither do I see any willingness on their part to change their ways. They are like a shoplifter which when caught says, "I'll be more careful not to get caught in the future", instead of, "Sorry. I won't do it again".
I call on the world to boycott US products, companies, organisations and groups, in order to apply pressure to the US government.
There are no shortage of other needy countries which will be grateful of our business (apart from numerous third world countries, there's Australia, Canada, Russia, etc.) all capable of filling the void.
This would mean avoiding Starbucks, Apple, Microsoft & Google, but at the same time would stimulate the competition of these global monopolies.
* startpage.com & ixquick.com are a great substitutes for using Google directly and send a strong message.
That's a very defeatist attitude I thing @Allan.
I didn't suggest hosting in two countries.
What's wrong with hiring local staff in the country where they register their business and even using a local cloud provider or dedicated servers in an existing data-centre in said country?
Nothing is impossible. Limitations exist only in your mind.
A toilet at Wilcon Depot in the Philippines caught my attention the other week and in appearance it resembles the one in the picture in every way. The features also sound the same. I suspect it's from the same manufacturer and probably same brand and model.
If my memory serves me correctly though, it was priced at around P99,000 (that's ninety nine thousand pesos (PHP)), which would convert to about 150,000 UK pounds.
I think therefore, some investigation is called for to decipher why the UK has to pay so much for the same toilet?
I think in the UK, you are getting ripped off!
That's true. They don't.
I gave feedback to them them around 2003 that if you were on a shakey internet connection and had at least one email account set up, each time the internet connection wasn't there during an automatic email check, you got a popup error message which stole focus, even if working in another application. Infuriating when your machine is configured to check every minute and you have four email accounts!
This made it impossible to get any work done without closing Opera if your internet connection wasn't stable. Even when it was stable, it's not uncommon for any one account to fail for occasionally, but I didn't need to know about it when it happened. I suggested an option to turn off notifications of failed connection during automated email checking.
Their response was (from memory), "fix your internet connection. If it's not stable there must be lots of other stuff playing up as well making the computer unusable." Actually, it was only Opera making it unusable and their response was written in a very unfriendly manner,.
They didn't listen then and they lost a loyal customer. Opera was my main email client at that time, after that I actually paid for The Bat (which rocks!) until moving to Linux in 2010 (which also rocks!).
I regularly investigate hacking attempts against my servers/networks and also investigate the sources of spam for the purpose of determining a) whether it is actually malicious/spam and b) in order to report such events to their ISP's.
How will we do this if their is no domain accountability?
At a time when internet integrity is policed by it's members, this seems like a pretty irresponsible move.
So this is the "eco-friendly'" future? Where so long as the carbon footprint is removed from the user and done some-place else, you are being a good responsible citizen!
Why does nobody consider that although the car itself gives off no fumes to speak of, the battery still has to be charged and what is used to charge it? FOSSIL FUELS!
It's just non-sense. This is just about supporting the multi-billion dollar climate change industry. You read in the article that Tesla were unable to make a profit as a car maker. Where do they make their profits? From the sale of climate credits!
Climate change is invented as a money making scam. Nothing more than that.
If it can be used to recover stolen cars, how will they do that it the device is only activated after a crash? This implies that the device is tracking you the entire time (and obviously that's the plan or why would they want us to have them?).
This device will for sure phone home continually and act as a conversation listening device in every vehicle in classic Orwellian style.
You'll wonder why suddenly every time you break the speed limit for a second or two, suddenly there's a patrol car on your tail.
This will for sure be exploited in order to use every ounce of it's capabilities against the public. Let's get the hell out of the EU FAST!
If you are insured 3rd party, fire and theft, it's probably better that you don't get your car back at all if it's been in an accident, since the insurers turn around and say, "You got it back, so no payout!". If it was written off, they say, "Sorry, you're not covered for that as 3rd Party/Fire & Theft only"!
I have actually witnessed a pacemaker being accidentally affected by a Panasonic 800W microwave oven. This occurred in 2004 at Christmas, when my mother put mince pies in the microwave oven for our guests.
Immediately she switched the oven on, the gentleman standing in the kitchen talking to her, appeared to go into panic/heart attack/fit. He survived without any long term effects as far as I know and was fine after a few minutes sitting to recover.
He explained that the microwave had interfered with his pacemaker and had sent it into 'Emergency Mode'.
It should be noted that the microwave was purchased around 1980.
The only time I ever end up on Bing's page or using IE, is when installing a new Window's OS; between doing that and the post-install operation of installing a proper browser & anit-virus for the user. Although, I have to admit, I haven't installed Windows on a PC since 2011 and don't intend to ever do so again.
I notice on my webserver stats for my website specific to the Philippines, that Google Chrome has 53% of the market share in the Philippines with Firefox at 25.4%, IE at just 14%.and Safari at 5.1%.
Based on 4,171 unique visitors in April and the site is concerning Online Bookkeeping Services.
I'm intrigued to find out how they will make an already diabolical product, worse (as 'Budget' iPhone) implies?
What will they do, make the storage and battery built-in so that you can't change them or upgrade them? Leave out the standard 3.5mm jack so people can't connect it to their standard speaker system or headset? Or maybe remove some features, like maps, but they don't work anyway from the reports I've heard!
Maybe they'll just produce the budget phones in an unpopular colour and reduce the price to a more reasonable level, for what many would already consider - an extortionately priced budget phone.
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