From: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org (idealcopy-digest) To: idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Subject: idealcopy-digest V8 #215 Reply-To: idealcopy@smoe.org Sender: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-idealcopy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk idealcopy-digest Friday, August 12 2005 Volume 08 : Number 215 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [idealcopy] OT HowTo... ["Keith A" ] Re: [idealcopy] zone alarm..........so tell me Paul........... ["Paul Pie] [idealcopy] 'nuff said.......................... [Ari Subject: Re: [idealcopy] OT HowTo... >Need a sweet name? Math and science terms usually make good names - Plank's Constant, The Fibbergotchi Sequence, >etc. Or just look around and look for inspiration like "Legal Notepad" or "1960 Exercise Bike." If in doubt, just find the >nearest book, go to page 56, second paragraph, line sentence, words 5, 6, and 7. That will be your band name. Hasn't really worked for me. 1st book (This Is Uncool) - "What Did We". So picked up nearest novel (a Graham Greene one) - "Came Immediately To". Prefer The Bay City Rollers method of sticking a pin in the US map meself ; ) K. np Eng Vs Australia > useful information found > > http://wiki.ehow.com/Start-a-Rock-Band ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:07:54 -0700 From: "Paul Pietromonaco" Subject: Re: [idealcopy] zone alarm..........so tell me Paul........... Hi Jeff, I noticed that you sent this e-mail only to me. However, I think it's of interest to the IdealCopy group, so I'm gonna quote from it and add some comments. Those of you using PCs in Internet Cafes - or Macs! - can feel free to skip now. ^_^ Also realize that these are simply my opinions for the most part - and I'm just having coffee right now. Thoughts may become clearer later. > zone alarm is free...............xp is not. > The only free OS is Linux. You run a version of Windows, you're paying for it one way or another. That being said, the SP2 upgrade for Windows XP *is* free if you already have WinXP. And, that's the one that gets you the firewall/anti-spyware/pop-up blocking/security center. You may mean that you have a computer with Win2K already installed, and that upgrading to WinXP costs money. True - but Microsoft is forcing the issue. They definitely have an end-of-life policy now (thiey didn't before). http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;%5Bln%5D;LifeWin if you've never seen it before. Win2K Professional is scheduled to be end-of-lifed 30-Jun-2005. This doesn't mean to panic and immediately buy Win XP. It does, however, require you to think about what the future usage of your computer is going to be. You have 4 options. 1. Do nothing immediately. It will take a while for the rest of the world to abandon Win2K entirely. They will however - it's been my experience in the software industry that Microsoft will bring pressure to do so. There were a couple of products at (insert three letter company name that I used to work at here) that we had running on Win NT 4.0 - even though officially we didn't support it anymore. We were told not to, to help support our relationship with Microsoft as one of their "partners". You will be able to get software for a while - but eventually you'll just have to leave the computer as is, and use it for what it can do. (This option might include option 4 as well.) 2. Upgrade to WinXP. This is obviously the solution that Microsoft would like you to do. This may or may not be practical based on the age and horsepower of the machine. It's also a little on the pricey side. Microsoft cuts huge deals with the major computer makers - I got WinXP Professional pre-installed on my laptop for $79 extra - WinXP Home would have been included in the price. The steep cost of upgrading might lead back to option 1 - or directly to option 4. 3. Wait a while, and then buy a machine running Windows Vista (aka Longhorn). This is also something to consider. Win XP has an end-of-life as well. Vista is coming - and it will pretty much obsolete all the hardware you currently have. (At least for now - Microsoft is backing off some of the announced features - this will make it more compatible with today's hardware.) I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do about this - as a tester of software running on Microsoft Windows platforms, I have a number of old versions of Windows around the house (WfW 3.11, Win 95OSR2, Win95J, Win98SE, WinXPpro) and more I could install in my developer kits. Hardware is cheap in the US though. I'll probably just build another computer with parts from Fry's (a US computer superstore) and put a developer's build of Vista on it. 4. Install Linux on your computer. This has several advantages. First - it's free. Second - did I mention free? Third, it's a very stable platform - and it moves into an OpenSource software development model. You can even leave your Windows system on the hard disk - install Linux as a secondary boot. I have several machines that set up this way. The major versions of Linux run on newer hardware, but there's always something you can run on your older hardware. Alternatively, there's BSD UNIX - which, in the form of NetBSD, is even more compatible. NetBSD runs on just about anything - even Sega Dreamcasts! BSD is also free. There's also Sun's Solaris - which I think is pretty darn near free for non-commercial use. I run Solaris a lot - it's one of my favorite operating systems - but it's also user hostile. Maybe that's why I like it. ^_^ You don't get Microsoft software (directly) with this option but hey - there's a lot of cool stuff for Linux out there. There are stories of how Digital Rights management for Microsoft Vista might preclude the running of Linux on newer hardware - but I'm sure they'll figure out a way around it. The Lniux community is clever. By the way - I'm not rabidly anti-Microsoft. I just understand them. Comes with being a computer enthusiast in the Seattle area for about 30 years. ^_^ > i run zone alarm all the time along with norton av and have few > problems......at sun of spy you can get a kick ass free antivirus program > that actually detected things norton didn't. i also run visual trace > route and can follow an intrusion alert back to it's source (up to and > including home addresses, names, phone numbers of you honest lot that > actually fill that crap out honestly upon registration) > That's the preferred way. Norton Internet Security is not quite the same as Norton Anti-Virus. Internet Security includes most of Zone Alarm's features. Ari is most likely duplicating his efforts a little. But - if it's working - I'm loathe to mess with it. I mostly don't bother with tracing attacks and such. Linux - and its big brother, Sun's Solaris - have had command line tools for doing this for years. There's a lot of things that happen on the internet, that's for sure. Instead, based on all of the Firewall testing I did on AtGuard at the three letter company I mentioned earlier, I use a bunch of passive security tricks that render my machines immune. As an example - none of my computers allow Microsoft File and Printer sharing over TCP/IP. Instead, they all use an older protocol called NetBEUI. What is NetBEUI? It's an old office LAN protocol that Mircosoft used to ship in the DOS days and is still included in all of their operating systems - even Win XP. Why is this cool? It's non-routeable. i.e. It won't propagate past a router. So, my machines - even though they're connected directly to the internet, share files like they're on an office LAN, since they're all on the same subnet. And, no one from the outside can see any of the shares. There's a few other stupid tricks like this - but I've rambled on enough for now. Back to the Java programming and job hunt. ^_^ Cheers, Paul ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:44:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Ari Subject: [idealcopy] 'nuff said.......................... http://movies.crooksandliars.com/greenday_wakemeupwhenseptemberends-video_ref.mov or if link is broken try this: http://tinyurl.com/8759l Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ End of idealcopy-digest V8 #215 *******************************