computoman

Quote from an unnamed blog: Quote: Probably going to get lambasted for this, but it is something to think about when judging a potential employee. Can a potential employee use what they have or do they need thousands of dollars just to do the simplest thing to get going. Here we will pit a confirmed Microsoft software only advocate versus someone who has at least some familiarity with linux or is willing to try something new and use the systems alloted to them. In each of two separate rooms on the desk is a Pentium II computer with 128 megs of ram, minimal graphics card, network connection, floppy drive and a 4 gig hard drive. This system will have access to the internet. Also on the desk, are two items. A brand new MSWindows 7 dvd install disk and a gpxe based floppy setup to install linux remotely via the network. The two potential techs are sent to each of the separate rooms to get their computer up and running plus send an email to predefined email address left on a piece o...

# Santa 's workshop is putting another old pc back to work with # openbsd or # tinycore linux for someone. Installed Tinycore linux. Many networking systems such as firewalls and routers run some type of Bsd. Even the mac osx traditionally has been run on bsd underneath. Rumor has it though ios will replace the current format. Installed Openbsd on a system I call a Pentium 1.5. It was the AMD Socket 7 upgrade to the traditional Pentium 1.

“The Night Before Christmas” (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore , whose “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” is now in the public domain) ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and in my home office Not a creature was stirring, not even my mouse; The code strings were hung by the mind’s eye with care, In hopes that St. Linux soon would be there; My staff were all snuggled quite still in their beds, And visions of run-times danced in their heads; While my wife’s RSS reader, and I done with News, Had just settled down for a long winter’s snooze, When back of my screensaver there arose such a clatter, I ran to the office to see what was the matter. Re-booting my old slow PC from c: drive, I waited for Windows’ trusty home screen to arrive. The glow from my screen on my new-woken eyes Gave a sparkle of mid-day to icons, any size, When, what to my wondering ears should appear, But the sound of a server, now wasn’t that queer? And a man lounged behind, whom I knew would be kind to us I ...

Was watching The Today Show and they had a segment where Microsoft was going to help out some schools and their computer educational programs with a free gifts of MSWindows 8. With articles like http://www.zdnet.com/mit-professor-windows-8-is-a-Christmas-gift-for-someone-you-hate-7000008479/ makes me wonder what MSFT is really up to. After a year, the school systems will probably have to start paying for licensing (also known as the Microsoft tax). So the MSWindows 8 will put the school systems possibly even in a worse situation.  To add insult to injury, if the school system can not pay for software, they probably have not updated their equipment recently. So to run the so-called free MSWindows 8, the school system already stretched for money will have to spend a whole lot of money to upgrade their computer equipment just to install and run MSWindows 8.  So how is that a bargain? Enter open source....  In fact, one such free operating system that predates linux by abo...

What a banner year for Linux and it's derivatives. The computer landscape has changed. And in other news... Linux Torvalds the creator of linux dropped linux support for the old i386. Not a big deal. Probably use free dos and opengem if I had to use one of those units anyway. People sometimes ask me what linux distro I use. Underneath the hood they are all basically the same. Thought I do use Debian the most as it is uniform over different hardware platforms. I.E. Arm, X86, X86_64 and etc.

You can now play the on-line games from Valve on linux according to: http://techgage.com/news/valve-beginning-to-list-linux-system-requirements-for-select-titles-on-steam/ See http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/ for more information. Note: Requires an up to date well annointed machine. Check out: http://www.valvesoftware.com/linuxsurvey.php

Several media entities are exclaiming the Microsoft server and Cals are going up in price. Linux vendors must be happy about that. Should be easier to sell Linux instead of Microsoft to current and future clients.  Traditionally with Microsoft, you just can not get one product to act as a server. You really have to buy several packages to have working servers. That means if you use Microsoft, you will feel the price increase several times. http://paritynews.com/business/item/502-microsoft-goes-after-enterprise-customers-raises-licensing-prices What really bugs me is Cals or customer access licenses, you are charged extra to access your own server for each client system you have. Why are you paying additional costs to access your own server. It's not their server. Should that not be included in the server costs. With the new server software, you will probably have to buy all new hardware to be able to use the new software to boot. If you use Non-microsoft products to also access the...

There is a new way of wifi networking that will allow you to have wireless nodes as a network backbone to replace a repeater network.The mesh networking has become popular in Austin, Texas and is spreading like wildfire. Another way people can become their own isp.  For example ,say you have several houses or homes that you want to connect. You will not have to run any cabling between the units. All you need is a router that can run the Hsmm-mesh (tm) firmware. The network is a variation on ham packet radio. The original intention was to have a free network where anyone can become a node. You can do a little specialization if you want it to be at least a little bit private via the ssid. Several homes or locations do not have to be next to each other, but the participating units have to have standard routers that have the hsmm-mesh software installed.  You can tie the routers together, by using traditional repeaters, but if the main router goes down, so does the network. ...

According to sources, Microsoft Windows 8 is not selling like they would prefer. Everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else. Mr. Sinofsky who was allegedly in charge of the project at Microsoft said he left of his own accord. In any respect, it seems as if Mr. Ballmer is using Mr. Sinofsky as a scapegoat per various articles on the internet. http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112730520/microsoft-management-steve-sinofsky-windows-111312/ . Definitely hardware manufacturers are refusing to be the scape goat also. Personally, I think there are other reasons for the slack sales of MSWindows 8. With a restricted economy, many people and companies are using existing equipment and software. Linux has also allowed the continued use of existing equipment thereby lessening the need for purchasing new equipment with a newer operating system.  The price of MSWindows 8 equipment and operating system is not price compatible with the economy. The systems may be worth the proud price ...

The new Linux mint Nadia  (14.1) allegedly now supports the EFI or secure boot of the latest Intel motherboards. Great for linux users who have been reluctant to upgrade equipment per: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2234 The latest update also should resolve the major issues of 14.0. 

The linux community has been in an uproar over the alleged Ubuntu (Canonical) joint setup with Amazon to search Amazon on local searches that could invade your privacy. ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks ). Data coming back from the searches could easily be hijacked by man-in-the-middle and similar internet attacks. You would also be inundated with advertisements even with simple file searches.  What really irks the community is that if you installed Ubuntu 12.10, you were not warned and did not have an option to opt out. Most linux users believe it should be an opt-in not opt-out setup. This is pushing linux users to use other distros or variations of linux particularly Mint linux.   Ironically the Ubuntu server has had that same issue with the landscape software, so every upgrade you have to un-install it. The software known as unity-lens-shopping is in the default unity desktop interface. If you use a different desktop...

Just a couple of instructables, that could help in a disaster situation. Coffee maker pasta: http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffee-maker-pasta/ Use a computer without a hard drive: http://www.instructables.com/id/Using-a-computer-without-a-hard-drive/ Computer network without a hard drive: http://www.instructables.com/id/No-hard-drive-network/ More later...

MSW 8 shortcuts. (subject to change at any time. use at your own risk). 1. Getting around Windows 8 Start Screen and Desktop Win Toggle between Desktop and Start Screen (or open Apps) Ctrl + Tab On Start Screen: Switch Between Start Window and All Apps Window Win , then Ctrl + Tab Open All Apps Window Win , then start typing App Name Search and execute Apps Escape Close Start Screen and go to Desktop Win + E Run E xplorer on Desktop Win + R Execute R un on Desktop Win + X Open Power User Commands on Desktop Alt + F4 Shutdown Windows Win + L L ock Computer Win + F1 Open Windows Help ▲ up 2. Windows 8 Charme Shortcuts Tip: Pressing Escape typically closes most Charme menus. Win + C Open Windows C harme. Use arrow keys and enter to select item. Press Win + Q Search Charme / last search option Win + F Search F iles Win + W Search W indows Settings Win + I Open Sett i ngs including Desktop, Control Panel, Person...

In an earlier post I talked about what I wanted to use as a media streamer. The Raspberry Pi came to the forefront. As the title states the RPi (Raspberry Pi for short) with a change of memory card can be all kinds of computing devices. XMBC was originally developed for the original Microsoft Xbox. Later it was developed for other platforms Including Linux. As the RPi came along as an SBC (Single Board Computer), it was ripe for being added as an XMBC derivative. Installation is quick and easy. Not only does the RPi have HDMI (the new Video interface), it also has composite out for being compatible with legacy systems. In our case we are able to interface the RPi to a DVD player. Since the Rpi a little bit larger than credit card size, that makes it perfectly able to become a portable system with the DVD player.   Just for being a media player makes it worth its thirty five dollars (plus shipping). The RPI has other uses. The first as a desktop computer.  You ca...

Twitter RSS url feed can’t be read… >>  FIX Quick Note: This was working in early October 2012, but due to twitter stopping support for RSS feed, can’t guarantee it will work forever.  Our twitter RSS feed was that it suddenly stopped working. So after searching around on the web… here is the solution we found. If you have used: https://twitter.com/favorites/ TWITTER_USERNAME .rss or https://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/ TWITTER_USERNAME .rss You now need to use: http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name= TWITTER_USERNAME

Fun with baking soda: http://www.instructables.com/id/Baking-soda-the-magic-kitchen-powder/ Make a little wine: http://www.instructables.com/id/Quicky-guide-to-making-wine/ Or maybe even some beer: http://www.instructables.com/id/Yet-another-home-made-beer/ All for now.

Ever wanted to know what is on your network graphically? There is a program that works on most platforms that support the java gui. Your best chance to document your home network. The program is jNetMap. The java version seems a lot more stable now. You can find it on sourceforge.net You can start up the the program very easily from the command line with (if you have java installed): $ java -jar jNetMap.jar or  C:\> java -jar jNetMap.jar The instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Map-your-network-visually/ has more information also. Once you run the software on your network and scan for devices, you can get a roadmap of what is there. What is really neat about it is, you can see what devices are up or down on the network and it makes trouble shooting easier. You can also see rogue devices on the network also that need to be investigated. You can use the mouse to move all the icons around to make the map more readable. You can even add notes to define wher...

Years ago before the internet, all communication was done over phone lines. You had to have a device that would allow your computing equipment to talk to each other such as a modem. Say a finance company employee would dial up the credit bureau computer, wait for a modem tone and then place the headset into what was known as an acoustic coupler (early version of a dumb modem aka modulator/demodulator unit).  Once connected the employee could type characters on a teletype device that was connected to the phone line for a name and password. Then to eventually get information about potential customers (i.e pull a credit bureau). The teletype machine had many fancy looking character keys on the keyboard. So that typing in the user name and password would seem very complicated. Computers only deal with ones and zeros. So the teletype machine had to translate when a key was pressed into a number that could be sent over the modem. At the time there was sort of a standard known as ASCII ...

Home media streaming devices are available everywhere from about fifty dollars to upwards of two hundred dollars. They all vary to which video services they support. Even then you may have to pay extra for some services up and above what you pay your internet service provider. Aka hidden costs. There are several shortcomings and advantages for all the units. This is really not a detailed comparison of the units, That changes so often, almost impossible to document. The first gripe I have about the media streaming devices is that you have to have an umbilical cord to the internet for the units to be usable. Even Roku requires a special application to be used for compatibility with the MythTV project.  MythTV is for the most part an open source computer based DVR. Maybe that is why AT&T now offers a free DVR (read the fine print) to combat such projects. If you have to have an umbilical  cord on the units then your use of it (i.e what you watch and etc is not private)...