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FUNCTION RANDOM - All Things Technological On Your Mind

Started by Camazotz Automat, August 17, 2012, 04:04:35 AM

Quote from: zeebo on August 06, 2015, 07:40:03 PM
I would have moved many years ago except there always seems to be a handful of apps that pull me back to the dark side.  I know I know people will say "Use Wine" or "dual boot" or "switch to open source apps" etc. but sooner or later, the convenience of running some particular win app natively is just too strong.

You lazy fuck ;)  LOL                 :D :D :D                     

Which ones ?  I'll bet I could find you suitable replacements. There are only a very few programs that don't work as good in Linux as they do in WinBlows. Visual Studio being one of them, even if you import all the libraries, so I'll give you that. Do you write code ?
   Yes, sometimes it takes a bit of searching around for 3rd party repositories instead of just the standard .deb's, .yum's, .rpm's etc, etc, etc, but they are out there.

  I said Fuck WinBlows 4 years ago, and I haven't looked back since. Yes, I've used WinBlows from vers. 95 - 8 and every time they piss me off even more. Just my 2-cents

P.S. - Have you checked the new distro's lately ? They've come a hell of a long way since 2008 and have matured nicely - especially the Ubuntu derivatives.

Quote from: albrecht on August 26, 2015, 02:54:41 PM
I've heard rumors and stories of this but I guess it happened to my cousin who is not very computer orientated. Anyway, he says all his pictures and files on his computer before a certain date are encrypted and there is a message about going to some website and paying a certain amount in bit-coins to release his data. He went to the website but it was down. And has never used bit-coin.

So is he screwed about getting his photos and docs back? Any easy (I'd be telling him over the phone or by email) instructions/tricks to get the stuff back? Or should he take PC in somewhere (where....he said he was going to Office Max or something. I thought maybe a local tech "nerd" place might do better service or even know "tricks" or "hacks" because more into computers than employees at a big box store. Any thoughts ideas appreciated. Or PM me.

That's something a local nerd would have to physically look at, or hook up the HDD/SSD externally. It might be a fairly easy fix, but It sounds like Ransom-Ware to me. If he's not technically inclined, TOR might be a problem for him, not to mention the fact that he would have to set up a Bit-Coin wallet and buy the bitcoins. The NSA & NRO control over 1/2 the exit nodes on TOR now also, so it's no longer a safe alternative. He should probably accept the loss and learn from it by having a dedicated back-up that he personally controls, plus maybe a cloud backup solution also - although cloud backup is convenient, it falls under the 1974 IBM virtual storage act, which means any and all data held in the cloud is subject to warrant less search. FYI.
Yes Backups are a necessity now.
If his drive has been encrypted, he can forget about cracking it unless he can access some time at a college super-computer. That's what he'll need to break the encryption.

Quote from: wr250 on August 26, 2015, 03:05:03 PM
1. do not use the computer . do not even turn it on.
2. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
3. take it somewhere that will pull the hard drive(s) out, and run recovery software on it. its possible many of the photos/documents can be recovered this way.
4. do not turn on said computer until steps 1,2,and 3 are completed.
5. wipe the drive with something like dban (a single pass is sufficient) and reinstall windows.

Damn good advice [better than mine]

Quote from: wr250 on August 26, 2015, 03:52:14 PM
sounds like ityes it can go on with the data. non-rewritable cds/dvd's as well as previously written to (but the physical write lock is on)  flash drives cannot be infected later (unless said write lock is turned off). it can encrypt anything that file permissions allow to be written too. so if you are a normal user it will encrypt anything you as a normal use can write to.

True.
Here's the thing. FOR EVERYONE ON A WINDOWS BOX - every pic you download or save to your device/system should be manually scanned. I used to do this every time when I ran WinBlows. Steganography is the process of embedding secret messages into pictures. You can also embed MALICIOUS CODE that activates during the OnClick event. So if you click the pic to open it in whatever viewer you are using, BANG you just activated the embedded code. Virus scanners will NOT pic up on Steganography most times. If the code is really nasty, it will follow you around where ever that pic goes and may even create a hidden partition, write non erasable registry values etc, etc, etc. Total can of worms.

Quote from: zeebo on August 31, 2015, 12:35:50 AM
That really sucks.  Scary stuff.  I guess they want bitcoins as it makes an anonymous transaction.  I heard a story of some police dept. somewhere that had to pay up 500 bucks to get their data back, so it's a pretty effective scam.

Yup.




Quote from: wr250 on September 18, 2015, 07:33:29 PM
http://www.itworld.com/article/2984659/linux/microsoft-has-built-a-linux-based-operating-system.html

link says it all
WHOOO hoo hoo hee hee hee. Blah ha ha ha ha. I don't fricken believe it. Bwaa ha hahahaha.

Basically what MicroSloth is saying is that their server software stack is so bloated, and the code so intermingled, that their own programmers had an easier time implementing the Linux software stack than trying to lean down their own code to run faster. OMFG, I never thought I'd see the day...

Quote"ACS allows us to debug, fix, and test software bugs much faster. It also allows us the flexibility to scale down the software and develop features that are required for our datacenter and our networking needs."

 

Great post wr250 :)

zeebo

Quote from: (Sandman) Logan-5 on September 14, 2015, 06:30:43 PM
...Which ones ?  I'll bet I could find you suitable replacements. There are only a very few programs that don't work as good in Linux as they do in WinBlows. Visual Studio being one of them, even if you import all the libraries, so I'll give you that. ....

The problem always ends up being something for work.  It'll be some software tool that only has a Win version, or whose file format doesn't quite translate between the Win app and an open-source clone, or a situation where you have to be in sync with all your co-workers and/or clients that are all on Windows, etc.

Sooner or later I just give up and go back for the sheer convenience.  (The other problem btw which seems to crop up has to do with drivers, but that seems to have improved alot in the last few years.)

Now that said, if I didn't have work issues, I'd just give MS the big FU and go full Linux everything (except I'd keep a dual boot setup for PC games only.)

wr250

Quote from: zeebo on September 22, 2015, 11:04:50 PM
The problem always ends up being something for work.  It'll be some software tool that only has a Win version, or whose file format doesn't quite translate between the Win app and an open-source clone, or a situation where you have to be in sync with all your co-workers and/or clients that are all on Windows, etc.

Sooner or later I just give up and go back for the sheer convenience.  (The other problem btw which seems to crop up has to do with drivers, but that seems to have improved alot in the last few years.)

Now that said, if I didn't have work issues, I'd just give MS the big FU and go full Linux everything (except I'd keep a dual boot setup for PC games only.)
you *could* run windows on a virtual machine such as virtualbox, use that for all your work apps.
steam runs on linux, and offers over 1500 games ...

zeebo

Quote from: wr250 on September 23, 2015, 04:50:39 AM
you *could* run windows on a virtual machine such as virtualbox, use that for all your work apps.
steam runs on linux, and offers over 1500 games ...

Yep good point, that's probably the best solution.  Are there any performance and/or interface issues with v-box? 

In any case I guess it boils down to how much time I spend in the Win world, which unfortunately is alot.   :(

wr250

Quote from: zeebo on September 23, 2015, 02:58:29 PM
Yep good point, that's probably the best solution.  Are there any performance and/or interface issues with v-box? 

In any case I guess it boils down to how much time I spend in the Win world, which unfortunately is alot.   :(

performance is dictated by the amount of  memory you have. i would say 8GB minimum. i ran 10GB for a long time, currently at 32GB. allocate 2GB to windows 7 minimum.

hard drive space is another issue. plan on a minimum of 60GB for windows 7. i have 6.5TB of disk space, including backup drives.
you can allocate alot of things, just be sensible. dont allocate 4 processors when you have a dual core system, for example.

Don't know if this is the best place do ask, but do any of you think there is any benefit in getting SEO certified?  Thoughts?

Quote from: zeebo on September 23, 2015, 02:58:29 PM
Yep good point, that's probably the best solution.  Are there any performance and/or interface issues with v-box? 


You can just get vmware for free.

Quote from: West of the Rockies on September 24, 2015, 08:15:51 PM
Don't know if this is the best place do ask, but do any of you think there is any benefit in getting SEO certified?  Thoughts?

Certs are only useful if you get them in the same product family-for example you have a bunch of Oracle+Java certs, or 3 or 4 Microsoft certs, or VMWare certs etc.

Thanks, MFM... Sounds like the free cert offerings are not respected, and a lot of the pay options  aren't much better.  Better to start a blog, learn SEO therein, and gain cred that way. 

Quote from: West of the Rockies on September 26, 2015, 03:38:41 PM
Thanks, MFM... Sounds like the free cert offerings are not respected, and a lot of the pay options  aren't much better.  Better to start a blog, learn SEO therein, and gain cred that way.
I wouldn't say they aren't respected, its just many people don't know what the cert teaches unless they have the cert themselves. You might get someone that has the same cert and is looking to hire someone with that cert.


I think this is a good book.
http://www.amazon.com/Googles-PageRank-Beyond-Science-Rankings/dp/0691152667

You can do the math with a program called SAGE-its an open-source Math program.

Could you start 10 blogs and interlink them?



analog kid

Linux Mint

It's based on Ubuntu, but it's a standard desktop, instead of Ubuntu's awful Unity environment that tried to marry a desktop with a touchscreen interface. You get all the software and support of Ubuntu, but without the bloat. Cinnamon Edition is most like a standard Windows desktop, and it's an answer to everything their users wanted in a DE over the years.

Quote from: zeebo on September 22, 2015, 11:04:50 PM
The problem always ends up being something for work.  It'll be some software tool that only has a Win version, or whose file format doesn't quite translate between the Win app and an open-source clone, or a situation where you have to be in sync with all your co-workers and/or clients that are all on Windows, etc.

Sooner or later I just give up and go back for the sheer convenience.  (The other problem btw which seems to crop up has to do with drivers, but that seems to have improved alot in the last few years.)

Now that said, if I didn't have work issues, I'd just give MS the big FU and go full Linux everything (except I'd keep a dual boot setup for PC games only.)
First 'bolding': That's a totally different animal there. You're right. When it come to work, and a steady paycheck, it's damn difficult to find the time to work out the synching issues. Proprietary software written specifically for windows may or may not work w/ Linux. It takes time to find out - that's the kicker. An app will never run as efficiently on a non native architecture as it does natively. It may run, & run without errors until you do a system update that breaks something. Even if it only takes an hour to fix it, that's still an hour you had to mess w/ it. Yup, don't fuck with shit needed for work. Win doesn't play nicely with other OSs. I learned that with the first VM's I set up when I was transitioning to Linux. Apps for work, stay native. We all have a bit of the dark side in us methinks. Driver support has always been a problem on the 'nix side also, can't deny it. A lot of that has to do w/ graphics card and other hardware manufacturers though.

Quote from: analog kid on October 01, 2015, 04:06:37 AM
Linux Mint

It's based on Ubuntu, but it's a standard desktop, instead of Ubuntu's awful Unity environment that tried to marry a desktop with a touchscreen interface. You get all the software and support of Ubuntu, but without the bloat. Cinnamon Edition is most like a standard Windows desktop, and it's an answer to everything their users wanted in a DE over the years.
Cinnamon is very much like the Win XP desktop. One of the closest Desktop Environments for anyone thinking of switching over. And your right, unity sukz ! I use xfce - no unity to tear out. Unity is probably great if you're a teeny-bopper that surfs the social networks all day and shops amazon & eBay, but it's not for me. The great part about linux is you can try out all kinds of different DE's to see what you like.

zeebo

Quote from: (Sandman) Logan-5 on October 02, 2015, 08:10:35 AM
...And your right, unity sukz ! I use xfce ...

I'm a fan of xfce as well, have it on an ancient laptop and it's still snappy.

Quote from: zeebo on October 02, 2015, 04:29:54 PM
I'm a fan of xfce as well, have it on an ancient laptop and it's still snappy.

I also like xfce. Perfect for netbooks as well.

wr250

Quote from: zeebo on October 02, 2015, 04:29:54 PM
I'm a fan of xfce as well, have it on an ancient laptop and it's still snappy.
i use lxde , uses xfces windowmanager , but is even more lightweight.  also have other DE's installed so i can use their programs.
note i use compton for compositing desktop effects such as :
translucent window titles
fading
menu effects
and so on.

Quote from: wr250 on October 04, 2015, 06:17:18 AM
i use lxde , uses xfces windowmanager , but is even more lightweight.  also have other DE's installed so i can use their programs.
note i use compton for compositing desktop effects such as :
translucent window titles
fading
menu effects
and so on.

I haven't come across that... will have to check it out. I always had problems w/ compiz, could never get the 3D cube to work right. Hardware/driver issues. Not to mention I didn't remove the other compositors and they were throwing interference. I never tried LXDE, I was always very happy w/ XFCE4. I might have to give it a whirl though, I've heard nothing but good about it.

Nice Desktop BTW. I see your running mumble & Foobar too - awesome ! Stan Deyo too - TooKewL  ;)

OK guys ( & gals), Let me drop a speed tweak on you. Here's a copy of my .gtkrc-2.0 file. I left it complete to avoid confusion. Yours should be in /home/<user name>/  if you're on a Debian system. Create one if it don't exist, just remember to hide it w/ the "  .  " at the beginning of the filename.  ;)  The start of my additions are commented out. Some folks don't like their systems' that snappy, but if you use old hardware, it really helps.

# Custom styles

style "gtk-theme-config-panel" {
bg[NORMAL] = "#204a87"
bg[PRELIGHT] = shade(1.1,"#204a87")
bg[ACTIVE] = shade(0.9,"#204a87")
bg[SELECTED] = shade(0.97,"#204a87")
fg[NORMAL] = "#2ef6f6"
fg[PRELIGHT] = "#2ef6f6"
fg[SELECTED] = "#2ef6f6"
fg[ACTIVE] = "#2ef6f6"
}

widget "*PanelWidget*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*PanelApplet*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*fast-user-switch*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*CPUFreq*Applet*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*indicator-applet*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
class "PanelApp*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
class "PanelToplevel*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*PanelToplevel*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*notif*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*Notif*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*Tray*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*tray*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*computertemp*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*Applet*Tomboy*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget_class "*Applet*Netstatus*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*gdm-user-switch-menubar*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
widget "*Xfce*Panel*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"
class "*Xfce*Panel*" style "gtk-theme-config-panel"

style "gtk-theme-config-menu" {
base[NORMAL] = "#204a87"
bg[NORMAL] = "#204a87"
bg[ACTIVE] = "#204a87"
bg[INSENSITIVE] = "#204a87"
text[NORMAL] = "#4ed92c"
fg[NORMAL] = "#4ed92c"
}

widget_class"*<GtkMenu>*"style"gtk-theme-config-menu"


# <-----------------------  --My additions for speed-- --------------------------------->

gtk-menu-popup-delay=0
gtk-menu-popdown-delay=0
gtk-menu-bar-popup-delay=0
gtk-enable-animations=0
gtk-timeout-expand=0
gtk-timeout-initial=0
gtk-timeout-repeat=0


You can get a good idea of what my Desktop looks like from the info in there. This is one of those odd tweaks from the recesses of the net that works really well and doesn't cause interference with other progs.

Enjoy.  ;)

P.S.: If it doesn't work for you after a logout /login, you may need to install gtk

sudo apt-get install gtk  <enter>

or if your alias is fetch:         fetch gtk <enter>

You have to decide if you want gtk on your system or not.  :)

MV/Liberace!

Quote from: chefist on June 26, 2015, 05:50:01 PM
Just installed the Obi 100 using Google Voice...works great! got a home phone again for FREE...after my magic Jack subscription ran out last year...

thanks MV!

sweeet.

MV/Liberace!

Quote from: area51drone on July 10, 2015, 10:39:33 AM
Man, I thought MJ was a good deal.   I definitely will switch to this after some of my MJ lines expire (I have 4 of them).    Only problem with it is that I don't think it offers 911 service?  So you're kind of fucked if you need it for emergencies.   For that reason it won't replace my regular home line.

understood, but as i am impervious to disaster and plan to live forever, 911 service is not necessary for me.

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