With the collapse of the pricing of the computers we buy, it becomes untenable for Microsoft to charge $75 for a license from the manufacturer when the whole computer will cost $600 or less. At $300, the $75 means that too big a chunk goes to Microsoft - the product is too expensive.
Now that the licensing costs have arrived at about a quarter to a third of the cost of a computer, purchasers are going to recognize that Linux is a viable option. Entire countries have come to this conclusion. Plan on seeing more and more Linux products.
Computers with missing restore CDs is one of the complaints I have with many of the new computers being sold today.
In the final analysis, you need to assure yourself that if the hard drive breaks or if the software on it breaks, that you can recover from such a catastrophe.
Several manufacturers have a policy of not providing bootable restore CDs for their product. You have to call them up, pay the postage, and then wait days for the CDs that you should have had in the first place. ALWAYS verify that the CDs are included in the sale. If not, go to the next manufacturer.
Then again, fewer and fewer PCs include a floppy disk drive. So if you are used to diagnosing and operating a laptop (or even a desktop) that has no floppy, either convert all of your diagnostics to operate from CDs or purchase a USB floppy drive and keep it in reserve.
And don't permit the vendor to omit the driver CD. Usually the drivers are included on the restore CDs, but you can't leave the requirement to chance.
Many of the current computer manufacturers try to tell you that the image you need is on the hard drive already in a "hidden" partition. What they don't tell you is that if the hard drive fails, the partition is worthless. Plan on insisting on CDs or pass.
Further, take a look at the BIOS on a demonstrator computer. If the BIOS is one of the minimal cheap ones, pass on the computer. If it is a computer without access to the BIOS, pass again. If the key press for the BIOS is not on the boot screen, pass.
Out of the miracle of advertising is the existence of Vonage. Vonage charges $29 a month for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), advertises on your nickel, charges twice the price for connections - and Skype does it all for free. Indeed, Bruce, who helped in the Clinic for three years, is now in Arizona and is bypassing the phone company that charges 5 cents a minute for long distance, and uses the dial out portion of Skype for 2.3 cents a minute - less than half the phone company rate. There is no charge if the phone conversation is computer to computer. In this case free is really better. Skype has another function: acting as a tickler when we both are near the phone but we don't want to disturb anybody at 2 in the morning. We will leave a message in the CHAT portion of Skype and when we see that the time of leaving the message is about current, we can call knowing that each of us is available for a phone conversation.
So why bother with Vonage?
A few weeks ago we finally unplugged our fax machine because we had been spammed to death with faxes. Then last week the local paper reviewed a person who was successfully sueing the faxers that were spitting out 2 million junk faxes per day. Because we had been personally affected by the fax equivalent of spam, I spent an hour getting educated on how to trace the spammer back to the origin and how to successfully sue the spammer into silence. I don't like having my own equipment be hostage to outsiders so I took the newspaper's advise and went to JUNKFAX.ORG. Go to the site and learn how to get rid of fax spammers. It turns out that it takes a lot of resources to do so - more than I have in time, money and perseverance. But you can help. Fascinating.
LogMeOn is a means of controlling a computer remotely by another computer. The program is a tremendous aid to the remote diagnosing and repair of an ailing computer. I am now proposing that computers that come to the Clinic be set up to receive connections from the Clinic so that when there are problems with the computer, at least a review of the computer can be accomplished remotely without having to bring the computer to the Clinic. We'll see how the new service works out and how well it is received. The only requirement is that both computers be on broadband (no dialup). LogMeOn is freeware for Clinic needs. Please feedback your experiences using the product. Don't worry about intrusions. The program needs to be activated and passwords given for access; thus you still control your computer.
And speaking of the Clinic, rather than having to wait for a specific weekend, just call to arrange a mutually convenient time.
May the wind be at your back and your computer never crash!
Seth told us why the odds are that we are probably not alone, and what the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is doing to find out "who is out there". He also explained why we probably have not yet been contacted (despite reports of close encounters and abductions). Of the three ways of detecting other life (going there, waiting for them to come here, and "listening" for them), listening is the most practical.
He reviewed some of the parameters of the Drake equation. He explained that any non-earthly biology found, even within the solar system, greatly increases the odds of life, and eventually intelligent life, forming elsewhere. Interestingly, intelligence could be a selector in the Darwinian sense, so life would tend towards intelligence.
It was a stimulating presentation, and convinced some of us that "we are not alone".
If you missed the presentation, contact Jim Dinkey or Stan Hutchings - an MP3 recording is still on the Club Computer; note it is 15 MB
From www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/ntcmds.mspx, here is the information you need to remove the read-only attribute that is sometimes applied to files backed up to CD or other external media, and are still read-only on recovery:
attrib [{+r|-r}] [{+a|-a}] [{+s|-s}] [{+h|-h}] [[Drive:][Path]FileName] [/s[/d]]
The Parameters are:
Typing the following from a command line (NOTE: The path must have double quotes around it if there are spaces in it):
attrib -r [[Drive]:\[Path]FileName] /s
will remove the read only attribute from the folder
I have some information about the state of High Speed Internet in the United States in comparison to the rest of the world. (Europe and Asia). I have been reading articles about that many other countries in Europe and Asia are way ahead of the United States for High Speed Internet and the price they charge. I am learning that in France for example, that they are offering High Speed Internet at 20mg rate, not 1.5mg or slower for around $35 a month, including 100 TV channels and Unlimited Telephone use. In Korea, they are offering 16 times the speed of our standard speed of 1.5mg for about $22 a month and also have solid DSL coverage through out Seoul, in comparison to the varied coverage in San Francisco. There are many rural towns in the US that don't have High Speed Internet, only slower satellite and slow dialup. In Canada there are many of the same rural type towns, but have DSL connections. The FCC said the minimum limit should be no less then 200k. Other countries have passed that speed years ago. The same thing goes for cell phone coverage. We have a telephone that works in Europe and the rest of the world.
We were in Former East Germany a few years ago and it worked in a deep forest and haven't noticed any pockets, either. In the rural town of Schmalkalden, we went to the town library to use the Internet and they had full speed DSL and the nearest largest city was 50 miles or more away. I can't say that for small towns like that here. Here in the middle of Silicon Valley, we have lots for dead spots everywhere and a lot of places were DSL barely works or non-existent. I find this to be ridiculous, since a lot of the technology for this stuff was invented here.
I also read that the big companies like SBC are more interested in Metropolitan areas, rather then some small farming town. Farmers are embracing the Internet for their business of farming. Farming these days has gone high tech also. The other thing is the government is going to drop the Telecom Act of 1996 to say that the big companies like SBC and Comcast cable don't have to share their lines with competitors like Earthlink, AOL, etc. This could end up making us either having to lose a competitor like Earthlink or AOL as a DSL provider and paying a lot higher prices to the big company. In other countries like France, the big companies are required to share their lines. Many towns here are tired of waiting for the big guys to come and wire them up, so they decided to do it them selves, but the big guys sue to stop it and helping local state governments to ram new laws through local state governments to ban it. In my opinion, it is many of these types of problems that are making our country fall behind the above-mentioned countries. It seems like that we can put a man on the moon, spend more money to help other countries like Afghanistan, etc. and blow up Iraq, but can't offer high speed to every American.
Let me start by saying I am a low techie. If it isn't easy to use, I don't. This is about the hated SPAM. I don't get much but there were a few that took forever to download and were useless. A friend told me about Vanquish.com (VqME). I am not paid to write this.
This SPAM eliminator works differently from all SPAM filters. A SPAMMER can send 300 million messages out for practically nothing. You don't need a low cost home refinance if you rent an apartment. Your 13 year old nephew isn't going to buy a motorcycle this year. You get the picture.
Know that vqME knows your address book and reads your mind. If you have business with AMAZON and/or other vendors who send you confirmation notices, they can get past the filter. Your 18 year old nephew frequents the motorcycle sales sites so that information gets through.
But all those many pain-in-the-neck advertisers are blocked. They are held in a hold file for you to review. As you scroll through the held list you can check off those to release, those to block or those to delete. You don't even have to do this. The hold file is eliminated every three days. But you could scroll through it and discover your Aunt Nettie is on-line now or the boy/girl you dreamed of in high school found you in a reunion notice.
One colleague told me that of almost 1,300 messages a week, only 21 were legitimate and VqME let those through. For $24.95/year this is a good deal.
BUT HOW DOES VANQUISH DO IT? This perfect system penalizes the sender. Hence, the bad guys lose. or more precisely, they cannot sidestep filters by disguising their mail as desirable commercial contact, unless they can afford the risk of many individually empowered recipients. That's right! Each recipient using vqME or using any mail service that is powered by this technology gets to decide if a message is spam after the fact. But don't worry. In practice, you never need to exercise such vengeance. Your power to punish the sender is enough to ensure that the bad guys won't bother you! Viola! Magic. If a spammer sends messages which are of no value to you (the apartment dweller example), the spammer is penalized financially. Even 1/2¢ penalty for 300 million spams is too gigantic for the sender to sustain. They will take you off their list. You are not involved in this loop. It just happens behind the scenes.
What about tech support? It is the owner. He talks to you in ordinary English, he is patient, he is readily available. He is one of the good guys. I am thrilled with this and plan to keep it forever.
One of the SPAUG persons has found that the following program seems to also handle the problem. Here are solutions - the link to Vanquish and others. Review them all and make your own decision. I am convinced that the “Challenge/Response” method is the best. I need to be responsive to those that have a legitimate need to email me but are approaching me for the first time.
While “Challenge/Response” is somewhat of a pain to new emailers to me, I consider the one-time inconvenience to them a worthwhile price.
Where I expect problems is when legitimate mass mailers such as some newsletters have troubles getting past the non-human interface. That item needs to be checked out carefully.
Even with the Zone Alarm email spam filter active, it seemed like I was spending all my time deleting spam that slipped through. So, I did a little research and ended up downloading a trial version of Cloudmark Desktop. It installed easily and is near-perfect at blocking spam. Once every few days, something will slip through but I click on "block" and it never happens again. It very rarely traps something I want to see, but clicking on "unblock" takes care of this.
The down side is, it's $39.95 per year for the subscription. But after using the trial version for 2 weeks, it does such a good job I bought it. Now my email is back to "boring", but that's lots better than "aggravating". Highly recommended.
Yahoo! mail (actually sbcglobal.yahoo.com) provides an automatic spam filter function. With very little tweaking some months ago, I see less than one spam item per week in the inbox. I scan the excluded spam list occasionally and find less thn one non-spam message (false positive for spam) per week.